In which modern language/environment/framework is programming a joy?
c00p3r: Joy is a your own product, at least for a half. It comes from combination of state of the mind, which you can cultivate, along with your current mood which is based on what you think.For example, if you can think about vi editor not the way that it is a mess of one-letter commands and beeps, but that it is very rare almost 40 years old masterpiece of smart design, efficiency and minimalism this approach might work. Think that it was created for text-typing pros, who types very fast without even looking on keyboard, and so on. If you prepare yourself for the way of discovering its wonders and ideas, and do realize that it is the best tools for storming throught dozens of files in /etc, and the sequences like '/^debug[Enter]I#[Esc]ZZ' are beautiful you will probably feel a joy.Same thing, if you will think about emacs (in console mode, without gtk gui) that it was designed to work via hardware terminals, like this lovely DEC's vt-i-didn't-remember-the-numbers boxes, with green letters and that wonderful hardware scrolling, you will probably understand, why there are so many of those Ctrl-x Crtl-x commands in it, and how smartly these commands was arranged.The power and beauty of 'screen' utility is a common knowledge.As for programming languages, just think about ideas behind them. Think that C is a great engineering masterpeice, that Perl is a most beautiful way to create a completely mess that works, that Ruby was developed by truly eastern mind, and lisp.. you know.I can't tell something about PHP except that it is an swiss-knife stuffed with low quality blades, and Java is the biggest buzzword ever (anyone can run some once-written spring-hibernate-jsf-with-all-depencies mess everywhere? on ARM?We are what we think. =)