apennwarr: Comparing Java vs. C# generics is a bit like comparing Denny's vs. IHOP cuisine -- i.e., tolerable when there's really no other choice. Or, perhaps more aptly, Band-Aid vs. Curad, where a professional calls for scalpel and sutures. There's nothing wrong with band-aids; millions of kids swear by them. Just don't confuse them with serious medical treatment. And don't take a first date to Denny's.

rufius: It takes all kinds. But, the world doesn't need more computer scientists who aren't Makers, we're awash in them. You might better do maths and computational plasma fluid dynamics. There's still plenty of room to make a unique mark there.

kelly: First, a belated thank-you for your Wikipedia updates. It sounds like Wikipedia is already a lost cause, and needs a fork badly. About languages... PHP, like Lisp and Python, suffers from early calcification in big projects, where radical changes quickly become too dangerous, because you can't find everything affected without exhaustive tests, and exhaustive (enough) tests are impossible in a big project. Java and C# try to do better by adding a type system, but the languages are fundamentally so weak that you do a lot more work without commensurate gain. In C++ (as in Haskell) the extra work pays. I don't use IDEs, but I gather Anjuta has become usefully mature, and you're supposed to be able to do C++ in Eclipse. (Some say Eclipse is actually tolerable if built with Gcj.) Operator overloading in C++ is no trouble; what you'll see overloaded most often are ops (), *, ->, and =, all for trivially sound reasons, and with no harm to intuitive analysis.