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Scott & Mark Learn To... Pick a Programming Language
Season 1 · Episode 4

Scott & Mark Learn To... Pick a Programming Language

Scott & Mark Learn To... · Microsoft

November 13, 202423m 34s

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Show Notes

In this episode of Scott & Mark Learn To, Scott Hanselman and Mark Russinovich dive into the quirks and philosophies of programming languages—debating the purpose of small languages, like Erlang, versus giants like JavaScript. Along the way, they discuss whether modern languages with hindsight (like Kotlin) are inherently better and reminisce about the good old days of writing code in C, Delphi, and even 6502 assembler. Mark reflects on transitioning to Rust for system-level code in Azure, marking a deliberate move away from C/C++. He highlights Rust’s ownership model, memory safety, and enforced concurrency as the game-changers. Meanwhile, Scott is poking fun at the oddities of language trends, including Python’s rise to dominance in machine learning.  

 

Takeaways:    

  • Rust’s key advantage with enforced memory safety 
  • Python’s dominance in AI due to its robust ecosystem not just its language features 
  • Why programming language selection is driven by ecosystems, tools, and personal preference 

   

Who are they?     

View Scott Hanselman on LinkedIn  

View Mark Russinovich on LinkedIn   

 

Watch Scott and Mark Learn on YouTube 

       

Listen to other episodes at scottandmarklearn.to  

         

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at microsoft.com/podcasts   


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