[gdp]

I feel like this is what would happen if you took every language under the sun and asked people who had never used them to offer commentary. It's just full of strange gaps and claims about differences between languages that just aren't even really true any more, and yet misses issues like "memory safety" from the discussion of C vs. JVM-languages, for example.

[coreyrecvlohe]

Perhaps, I do like the quote at the end though about Javascript:

"To make a music analogy, JavaScript is a band that becomes famous for cheesy pop songs, and only later earns indie cred as discerning fans discover the cutting edge artist underneath the cheesy pop exterior."

[tryitnow]

I like the intent of the post, but if what you say is true, I'm disappointed. This sort of information could be useful for newbies, but it seems like something that should be in a wiki, not just in an article where it's just one person's opinion.

Does anyone know a good example of a language comparison that is accessible to someone who is completely new to programming?

[gdp]

I'm sure many have tried, but language comparisons actually devolve into uselessness very quickly, because the things we can quantitatively measure and compare about languages are mostly not the things that people care about in practice. For example, I can tell you what classes of errors are possible in Javascript programs versus what errors are possible in Python programs versus what errors are possible in Haskell programs, but it doesn't really seem to affect peoples' language choices. Language comparisons tend to devolve very quickly into arguments about personal taste and little else. I wrote some thoughts on this subject a while ago: http://plsadventures.blogspot.com/2009/08/simple-patterns-fo...