catflap.org Online Dictionary Query

  languages of choice
       
          C and Lisp.  Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and
          most good ones are fluent in both.  Smalltalk and Prolog are
          also popular in small but influential communities.
       
          There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers
          with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice.
          They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other
          hackers consider them a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel").
          Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or
          appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and
          a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems
          programs.  Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific
          programming.
       
          Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and
          Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered
          necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language),
          and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL
          or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and
          unmitigated loss.
       
          [{Jargon File]
       
       

  languages of choice n. C, C++, LISP, and Perl. Nearly every
     hacker knows one of C or LISP, and most good ones are fluent in both.
     C++, despite some serious drawbacks, is generally preferred to other
     object-oriented languages (though in 1999 it looks as though Java has
     displaced it in the affections of hackers, if not everywhere). Since
     around 1990 Perl has rapidly been gaining favor, especially as a tool
     for systems-administration utilities and rapid prototyping. Python,
     Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential
     communities.
  
     There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with
     FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often
     prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider
     them a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel" in Appendix A). Assembler is
     generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything
     but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and
     hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking
     niche in scientific programming.
  
     {Pascal" rel="nofollow">Most hackers tend to frown on languages like {Pascal and {Ada},
     which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for
     hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard
     everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional
     card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.