In which modern language/environment/framework is programming a joy?
silentbicycle: Lua and Python.For real projects, Lua will expect you to know C, but in exchange, it avoids duplicating a bunch of functionality that you already have on hand. (Calling C from Lua is trivial.) The designers have done an excellent job of keeping the language simple and clean without detracting from its expressiveness. (Lua is to Scheme as Python is to Common Lisp.)Python is bigger, and has more design quirks for backward compatibility, though Python 3 attempts to fix this. OTOH, it also has far more off-the-shelf libraries, and a significantly larger community.(Forth is also fun. I'd be lying if I said I've ever done anything useful with it, but it really captures the wonder of being a kid and playing with Basic.)