The Top Five at Slant

Slant.co is a product recommendation community with the goal of finding the best product or app for you. It’s interesting to see how Slant ranks the Smalltalk programming language.

I looked at two questions. The first was: What are the best (productivity-enhancing, well-designed, and concise, rather than just popular or time-tested) programming languages?

The Top Five are:

1. Elixir with 35 upvotes and 15 downvotes
2. Smalltalk with 75 upvotes and 17 downvotes
3. Python with 92 upvotes and 47 downvotes
4. Scheme with 21 upvotes and 11 downvotes
5. Nim with 31 upvotes and 15 downvotes

I don’t know how Slant’s ranking algorithm works but I do find it peculiar that Elixir ranks higher than Smalltalk. Smalltalk has more than twice as many upvotes and only slightly more downvotes than Elixir.

Interestingly, Python has the most upvotes but also a very large number of downvotes.

However, I’m glad to see that Smalltalk is at least in second place. And deservedly so.

The second question I looked at was: What is the best programming language to learn first?

The Top Five are:

1. Python with 461 upvotes and 69 downvotes
2. Smalltalk with 62 upvotes and 22 downvotes
3. Racket with 18 upvotes and 7 downvotes
4. Elixir with 24 upvotes and 11 downvotes
5. C with 183 upvotes and 87 downvotes

This time, it makes sense that Smalltalk is in second place. Python has a whopping 461 upvotes.

So in both questions, Smalltalk acquits itself very well. I’ll take that.

I also looked at other programming language-related questions but most of them had too small a population of voters to be taken seriously (fewer than 300 participants). However, here are a few…

What are the best server side programming languages?

From 868 voters, the Top Five are:

1. Elixir with 66 upvotes and 15 downvotes
2. Python with 66 upvotes and 22 downvotes
3. Clojure with 24 upvotes and 5 downvotes
4. Golang with 64 upvotes and 20 downvotes
5. Haskell with 28 upvotes and 6 downvotes

What are the best languages for learning functional programming?

From 503 voters, the Top Five are:

1. Haskell with 84 upvotes and 14 downvotes
2. Elm with 41 upvotes and 6 downvotes
3. Clojure with 57 upvotes and 12 downvotes
4. Elixir with 27 upvotes and 3 downvotes
5. Scheme with 16 upvotes and 2 downvotes

What is the best programming language to learn for backend developers?

From 362 voters, the Top Five are:

1. Python with 53 upvotes and 17 downvotes
2. Elixir with 33 upvotes and 6 downvotes
3. Golang with 34 upvotes and 6 downvotes
4. Rust with 17 upvotes and 1 downvote
5. TypeScript with 4 upvotes

While this question has too small a population, it’s interesting nonetheless: What are the best systems programming languages?

From 214 voters, the Top Five are:

1. Rust with 36 upvotes and 24 downvotes
2. Nim with 25 upvotes and 8 downvotes
3. C with 19 upvotes and 5 downvotes
4. C++ with 26 upvotes and 10 downvotes
5. D with 12 upvotes and 11 downvotes