As a JetBrains Mono user for the past couple of years, I used Monaspace all day this past Friday to try it out, and it was not for me. The oval shape of JetBrains Mono glyphs is so aesthetically pleasing to me, and I don’t think I’d be able to switch to another font that doesn’t have similar styling.
I’ve gotta go with Elixir. I’ve been using it professionally for about 7 years now, and it’s been amazing to see it grow in the way it has. It’s very well-designed, based on a rock-solid foundation (Erlang/OTP), has an amazing standard library with fantastic documentation, and has a strong culture of pragmatism and developer friendliness.
I personally work in web dev, and Phoenix has consistently shown itself to be an extremely capable web framework. LiveView has kicked off a new paradigm for making web applications that most major languages are copying.
There’s a solid embedded story with Nerves, and serious foray into ML/AI with Nx. It’s obviously not suited for the lower level stuff, but that’s when Rust integration with Rustler comes in. Many wouldn’t be interested in Elixir because of it’s dynamic typing, but there’s serious effort by the creator and a research team into developing a gradual type system for the language.
Just an overall solid language that’s extremely pleasant to use with a really healthy and (slowly but surely) growing community.
I really love Elm, and it challenges the common notion of what it means to be a “healthy” language/ecosystem. It’s a beautiful passion project that can really only be used if you adhere to the vision of its creator, but it’s a really admirable and utopian vision.
The reasons for it not being very popular are pretty clear (slow language evolution, “one way to do anything”, perfectionist design), but it’s an extremely cohesive and friendly language. I’ve never used it for anything serious, but I hope it stays around. Clearly the creator isn’t aiming for widespread adoption, but I hope that the niche it’s created grows nonetheless, because it’s a lovely ecosystem and community.
I don’t know exactly what environment you’re working, but Postgres has a reputation as the best DBMS to work with from a developer’s perspective. I definitely feel that way, at least.
What type of lab are you working in, and what other technologies do you work with?
I changed my VS Code theme to Dracula around Halloween 2016 for fun. I never changed it back.
Keybindings really can make a huge difference, whether they’re existing ones you discover or ones that you create.
I remember discovering VS Code’s default key binding for “going back” to the previous cursor position (going across files), which is Ctrl±. That really reduced the mental load of keeping track of which functions/files I was visiting and made me feel more at ease jumping around, knowing I could easily get back to where I was. If you need more context on some code you’re writing/reading, you can more easily go off on little tangents to gather whatever context you need, and that speeds the whole process up.
Same. I only got through day 3 last year since I didn’t have time to do both the learning and the solving. I think I need a longer term project to give me more focus when learning a new language. This year I’m just sticking with my usual language Elixir, which I always enjoy.