Programming language authors really need to learn how to make a website. Look at Ruby's: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ No long explanations about what it means for Ruby to be a dynamic, object-oriented language. I don't have to read its author's paper or book to get it. Just a short code snippet to show me what it looks like and several links so I can learn more.
Although true, many of those authors are too busy with improving/fixing their compilers.
E.g. the D language doesn't have a very modern looking website atm., but someone has took the task to update it recently. It's not up yet since the community is trying it out.
Let's stop throwing around the word ADHD. It encourages people who just don't have the discipline to focus to give themselves an excuse, while lessening the perception of the problems for people who are actually debilitated by it. There's no media-driven conspiracy to alter your mind. There has been an evolutionary trend to favor the animal who could quickly notice the approaching bear versus the animal too intent on…
"There's no media-driven conspiracy to alter your mind."
I think that's wrong. Forget whether it's a conspiracy or not; many things are effective conspiracies. These days, media is designed to be sticky and most media is driven by advertisements, the goal of which are to make you think you're not good enough unless you buy certian things.
Video is a think pipe directly into your brain, and I believe there is evidence to suggest that "screen time" does alter the way your mind functions.
In that list, Clojure is the language that excites me the most. It's a modern, pragmatic Lisp ready for the multiprocessor world. You can do a lot worse than trying it out if you haven't already.
Lot of people claim that STM in Clojure is the big reason to use it. To me it's been a lot simpler: a) I want some macros to use for JVM-based projects b) I like using Emacs + SLIME (it's the best development environment, period). Unfortunately the noise of Rails fanboys migrating to it with their usual laundry list of complaints ("no IDE support", "no good web framework") is annoying. I have nothing against Ruby in…
Are "Rails fanboys" really complaining about lack of IDE support? I was under the impression that IDEs weren't especially popular among Rails programmers (as compared to Vim and TextMate).
I found Kodu very interesting. It's a graphical programming language by Microsoft Labs, that allows kids to create games. It runs on the XBox and uses only the XBox controller. The XBox part turned me off right away, because that's the last thing I need in my house while we're homeschooling our children, however, I found a free academic version that runs on the PC: http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects-kodu.html
Out of curiosity, why would having an XBox in your home be a problem? I was homeschooled (though only in high school) with several consoles in our house, and it doesn't seem to have been a problem. I wasn't allowed to goof off school time on video games any more than I could have played my Game Boy in a public school classroom. edit: I suppose a more clear question would be: What is it specific to homeschooling that…
I'm trying to avoid constructing the school-time/video-game-time dichotomy because to do so would just mean I was a missionary for consumerism. Think about it: Why should I reinforce to my children, from an early age, that videos and such are fun and learning is not fun; consuming entertainment is what you want to do, and productive work is what you don't want to do, but rather have to do so you then can consume entertainment. That's just the type of people who the captains of industry hope I will introduce into the world: people who will obediently go work for them, only to turn around and consume their products.
Lot of people claim that STM in Clojure is the big reason to use it. To me it's been a lot simpler: a) I want some macros to use for JVM-based projects b) I like using Emacs + SLIME (it's the best development environment, period). Unfortunately the noise of Rails fanboys migrating to it with their usual laundry list of complaints ("no IDE support", "no good web framework") is annoying. I have nothing against Ruby in…
Are "Rails fanboys" really complaining about lack of IDE support? I was under the impression that IDEs weren't especially popular among Rails programmers (as compared to Vim and TextMate).
I don't think strlen is being accurate by saying its "Ruby fanboys" who are the source of a lot of criticism. Clojure does have a lot of former Java developers who aren't used to non-IDE development on the JVM. Others don't like the apparent complexity Emacs comes with (Emacs, Slime, Swank, Paredit? All I want to do is enter some ascii characters and run a compiler!) That said, I think Clojure is improving in those fronts with broader editor support, guides to getting Emacs set up, and a growing list of libraries.
Concurrency should really be the number one issue for any new programming language. To my knowledge, none of the popular languages out there today are really able to handle concurrency in a seamless way which doesn't generate headaches for the developer. Distributing computation over threads and machines needs to be easier.
Programming language authors really need to learn how to make a website. Look at Ruby's: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ No long explanations about what it means for Ruby to be a dynamic, object-oriented language. I don't have to read its author's paper or book to get it. Just a short code snippet to show me what it looks like and several links so I can learn more.
Although true, many of those authors are too busy with improving/fixing their compilers. E.g. the D language doesn't have a very modern looking website atm., but someone has took the task to update it recently. It's not up yet since the community is trying it out.
The D language actually is an example of a good site, in that there's a large chunk of code on the front page.
I was playing with Clojure this last weekend, and so far have enjoyed it. I ran through a dozen or so project euler problems, but am now looking for something that takes longer than 10 lines of code to complete. HN, what other projects do you do to familiarize yourself with a new language?
I found going through "Introduction to Algorithms" and porting the algorithms in the book to a great way to get used to a new language.
Okasaki's _Purely Functional Data Structures_ can be a good choice, too - depends on the language.
Rob Pike and Robert Griesemer – Go
Steve Dekorte – Io
Charles Nutter – Duby
Matt MacLaurin – Kodu
Gilad Bracha – Newspeak
Jeremy Ashkenas – CoffeeScript
Adam Chlipala – Ur
Francisco Tolmasky – Objective-J
Jonathan Shapiro – BitC
Luke Hoban – F#
Tav – PyPy
Rich Hickey – Clojure
Christopher Bertels – Fancy
Jonathan Edwards – Coherence/Subtext
Alex Eagle – Noop
Slava Pestov – Factor
Erik Meijer – C#
Mark S Miller – E, Caja
Brian Rice – Slate
Walter Bright – D
Wolfgang De Meuter and Tom Van Cutsem – AmbientTalk
Phil Mercurio – Thyrd
Melvin Smith – Cola
Carson Gross – Gosu
Alexander Fritze – Stratified JavaScript
Alan Eliasen – Frink
Dan Bornstein – Dalvik
Steve Folta – Trylon
Ola Bini – Ioke
Amos Wenger - ooc