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Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

thorstenball.com

111–120 of 319 posts

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#111
post #105

Learn 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.

I had to use a jar in a .net program. Do you know how much of a pain in the ass that was?

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#112
post #105

Learn 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,…

" its because they know exactly 1 language ,"

which language is this? I'm guessing Python.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#113
post #105

Learn 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,…

This reminds me of something Rich Hickey said about becoming a better developer:

https://gist.github.com/prakhar1989/1b0a2c9849b2e1e912fb

“A wide variety of experiences might lead to well-roundedness, but not to greatness, nor even goodness.”

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#114
post #80

Based on my personal experience, I'd say there are good "buckets" of language-context pairs and you can pick one from each according to taste. C/C++/Rust/Ada on bare metal or systems work for building abstraction upwards from the hardware. Clojure/Scheme/Common Lisp/Racket: A good dynamic language that's extremely composable, to build abstraction downward from human logic. ML/F#/Haskell: Powerful type systems that ca…

I've drawn slightly different buckets for myself / experiences:

A high performance systems language: Asm/C/C++/Rust

A garbage collected language (JIT or compiled): Java/C#/Go

A scripting language: Python/Perl/Ruby/Lua

I think one from each bucket and you'll be able to excel anywhere.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#115
post #105

Learn 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'm not familiar with the author, but I didn't take the article strictly from the perspective of the labor market. There are people who program as a hobby, for example. For those who are interested, it can be enlightening to see how different language designs lend themselves to different tasks.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had to use a jar in a .net program. Do you know how much of a pain in the ass that was?

That is very nasty joke sir.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#117
post #105

Learn 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,…

Not sure know how far you may be into your career but as one who’s had a couple decades, it’s definitely possible to have both. I have been able to learn two very different languages (C and Haskell) to that level of comfort and am feeling nearly there in Rust. At the same time, I feel reasonably comfortable picking up a project in any of about 20 others with frequent reference to standard lib docs.

With only my own experience and that of people I’ve worked with to go by I can’t provide any broader scope, but I feel like it really is the case that a critical mass of familiarity with different languages and ecosystems makes it far easier to pick up and run with others and be more or less unaffected by the differences. It is probably important that the languages in your set be actually different though, rather than superficially different as most historically-popular languages have tended to be.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#118
post #105

Learn 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'm not familiar with the author, but I didn't take the article strictly from the perspective of the labor market. There are people who program as a hobby, for example. For those who are interested, it can be enlightening to see how different language designs lend themselves to different tasks.

The author wrote 'Writing an Interpreter in Go' for reference.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#119
post #41

JavaScript is one of the must learn programming languages. Server side code, client-side web app code, npm links it all together... Well it seems cliche' but also true...

It never should have escaped the browser. It's brought the suck to everything now...

It should have been replaced in the browser.

Re: Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them

#120
post #92

I couldn't agree more, but if I could make a recommendation. If you already know a mainstream OO language, you won't get much benefit out of learning another in the same arena. Going from Java to C# you will learn less than going from javascript to ocaml or Java to Haskell. The best thing (for my own learning) I ever decided to do was learn Haskell. I have never been paid to write code in Haskell but it gave me such…

Out of curiosity, if you were to point out the focal languages on each paradigm, what would they be ?
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