It may depend on the person. So don't take it a simple idea. Some will find languages that fit their brain so much more they'll be very happy. But only if they can make a living with it. Going back to Java That said it will probably enbroaden your mind tenfold.
Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
101–110 of 319 posts
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#102Instead of learning more programming languages, learn more programming languages paradigms. If you know OOP, try functional programming; if you use dynamic types, try static types as well.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learn shell, a scripting language like Python, and a systems language like Java, C, Rust, Go, etc. I think that’s all you need to know as a backend or systems/DevOps Engineer.
“That’s all you need to know” is very reductive. Never stop learning: add JS and functional languages such as Clojure, Scala, OCaml. You don’t need to use a language every day for it to be useful. Learning a bit of Objective-C taught me a lot about naming variables. Smalltalk taught me about non-class-based OOP. Forth taught me low-level stack operations. Prolog, Io, BASIC, Erlang taught me a lot of things I use ever…
The more languages you learn, the more you realize they have more in common than not. At some point it’s time to stop learning 20+ languages and start building stuff. I never said to stop learning, but be very careful what you spend your time learning. If you can be world class at Python alone, able to solve just about any problem with it, it’s better than 100% knowing many languages. Knowing a language doesn’t mean you know all of the standard libraries and third party libraries, much less solve challenging problems efficiently.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#104“LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot. […]
It’s best, actually, to learn all five of Python, C/C++, Java, Perl, and LISP. Besides being the most important hacking languages, they represent very different approaches to programming, and each will educate you in valuable ways.
But be aware that you won't reach the skill level of a hacker or even merely a programmer simply by accumulating languages — you need to learn how to think about programming problems in a general way, independent of any one language. To be a real hacker, you need to get to the point where you can learn a new language in days by relating what's in the manual to what you already know. This means you should learn several very different languages.”
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#105Learn more ? I'm actively trying to unlearn a bunch of languages at this point!
ofcourse, when I was a wageslave in the bay area, its nice to know python, java, javascript, scala etc. - got me jobs every 2-3 years & put food on table.
now that i'm in academia, its completely upside down. literally everybody is way more productive than me in just about any task. The other day I as supposed to program a poisson clock, it took forever. Meanwhile my advisors & classmates with zero industry experience chug thru these tasks effortlessly. Lately I've confirmed its because they know exactly 1 language , but they know it so well & in so much depth, they know exactly where to look, the right mcmc library, the right slice sampler, the right optimizer, that's what matters.
There's no point programming the same bloody front-end & back-end in a dozen different languages just because of industry constraints. That's like eating a spaghetti with a fork, a spoon, with chopsticks, with your fingers...its the same fucking spaghetti. cook something else, not just rotate dish-ware.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Here are the languages and DSLs that ended up in the mix: cron, Makefile, bash, sed, regex, jq query, python, R, sql, nginx conf" And also anyone who could replace you will have to know all these languages. Nice approach to job security.
> cron, Makefile, bash, sed For a programmer with a minimal amount of linux experience, it likely takes a week to catch up to what the codebase is doing with these. > regex There are good tools to destructure regex. > python sql jq query I consider those as "given" or "learnable good enough in a week" > nginx conf Don't know this. Overall, "knowing all these languages" seems overblown in the choice of words for me. J…
> There is 1 proper general-purpose language in there
That will depend on what the GP has done with SQL. Also, JQuery implies in Javascript. There are up to 3 general-purpose languages in there, one of which nearly any developer will know.
There should be plenty of people capable of taking the codebase, but it's not a trivial single language case. The upside is that good developers will be overrepresented when compared to the population that knows one of Python or Javascript.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
...and everyone knows code has nothing to do with algorithms and data structures.
Well, if you’re doing yet another software as a service CRUD app or another bespoke app that will never be seen outside of a company - like most developers - knowing: Given a binary tree, return the level order traversal of its nodes' values. (ie, from left to right, level by level). Isn’t that useful or how to invert a binary tree. I would much rather you show some competence in the language we are using. Knowing le…
Everything you're saying is true, but for some reason companies still think they need to test you on hackerrank/leetcode like problems. I would much prefer to do some code in the frameworks I claim to know.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#108I just make everything like Smalltalk anyway so what’s the point.
Well, it's not a problem, but if you ever want to "fix" it, just take some problem so solve by writing Smalltalk in Prolog.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#109Learn more ? I'm actively trying to unlearn a bunch of languages at this point! ofcourse, when I was a wageslave in the bay area, its nice to know python, java, javascript, scala etc. - got me jobs every 2-3 years & put food on table. now that i'm in academia, its completely upside down. literally everybody is way more productive than me in just about any task. The other day I as supposed to program a poisson clock,…
I work for an airline. I known about constraints. If I knew only one language, I never would be at the level I am. Here is the tech stack I deal with daily.
VB6 Kix scripts Powershell .net 3.5 Winforms WPF .net 4+ .net core .net asp Java JavaScript React Angular C++ Golang.
If programming is a job and not your craft, it will be harder for you. You just have to practice more.
Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cron, Makefile, bash, sed For a programmer with a minimal amount of linux experience, it likely takes a week to catch up to what the codebase is doing with these. > regex There are good tools to destructure regex. > python sql jq query I consider those as "given" or "learnable good enough in a week" > nginx conf Don't know this. Overall, "knowing all these languages" seems overblown in the choice of words for me. J…
> There is 1 proper general-purpose language in there That will depend on what the GP has done with SQL. Also, JQuery implies in Javascript. There are up to 3 general-purpose languages in there, one of which nearly any developer will know. There should be plenty of people capable of taking the codebase, but it's not a trivial single language case. The upside is that good developers will be overrepresented when compar…
JQ is a JSON specific query language . Not related to JavaScript.