Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #84

mcguire wrote: post #82

Earlier 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…

Depends very much on what that CRUD app is doing.

Knowing algorithms and data structures pretty well, is the difference between an update button taking a couple of minutes, or milliseconds.

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

#132

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #96

CuriouslyC wrote: post #39

Frankly I've never understood the desire to be a polyglot. The time spent learning new syntax and a new standard library could have been spent learning libraries, algorithms, data structures, etc, so I don't think it's the most productive way to improve yourself as a programmer. I'm more interested in learning a new language because it lets me do something I couldn't do before.

At work we use C#, Java, C++, Python, BASH, powershell, Javascript, PERL, etc... If you only want to work on C#, you're limiting your mobility here. Personally, I never get bored because there's so many interesting projects in different languages.

Are we working together? :)

Yep same here.

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

#133

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

zcw100 wrote: post #7

I’m getting tired of this. Yes I see the benefit of knowing multiple languages but let’s look at the other side of that coin. There’s the dev that is familiar with a dozen languages and writes terrible code in all of them. When exactly are we supposed to be learning all these languages? Nights and weekends that effectively has you working 24/7? Or more likely some developer that has a personal relationship with the C…

There is code that makes the customer happy and willing to pay for more projects, and perfect code that never sees the daylight.

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

#134

Post by finndark » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

Learn Prolog - everything else is an extension.

"One [language] to rule them all."

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

#135

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

zcw100 wrote: post #23

orangeshark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When exactly are we supposed to be learning all these languages? Some argue that as a professional, you should be spending time outside of work learning to improve your career. You can't expect your employer to give you time to learn. I find it can be difficult though, especially when you want to spend your time outside of work on other things like family and hobbies.

I didn’t say you shouldn’t spend personal time on those things but you should expect to be compensated one way or another for it. It’s interesting how people in IT separate their skills from their compensation. If my lawyer or doctor is working weekends I guarantee one way or another they are making damn sure they’re getting compensated for it.

I certainly know teachers, doctors and lawyers that improve themselves out of their own pocket and time.

Unfortunately not everything gets done, or paid for, during work time.

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

#136

Post by baby » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

dxbydt wrote: 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,…

You did it wrong. What you are supposed to do is learn a bunch of languages and master one or two.

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

#137

Post by magnusjonsson » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #121

dajohnson89 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm this way with foreign languages: Spanish and french. I know french very well, and learning/speaking Spanish is significantly harder because I'm always using french words by mistake. sure it'll get better with practice, but interlingual dyslexia is real.

I have walked up to a shop keeper and asked [french(Can I have a loaf of)][Chinese(bread)] I'm white so I'm sure this was even more confusing for him

When I started learning Mandarin (my fourth language) I became totally unable to speak French (my third language) as the Mandarin words would pop up first in my mind. I think by now they've been sufficiently separated in my mind but I haven't had any use for my French so it as atrophied anyway. I'm now learning Cantonese which is similar to Mandarin and I'm only occasionally mixing it up with Mandarin. It seems to me the distance between languages isn't so important, you can mix up any two languages or not. It probably depends more on how much your brain has to rewire itself to acconmmodate the new language?

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

#138

Post by vram22 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

nathanyo wrote: post #118

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And a follow-up book about a compiler.

https://interpreterbook.com/

https://compilerbook.com/

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

#139

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #131

scarface74 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Depends very much on what that CRUD app is doing. Knowing algorithms and data structures pretty well, is the difference between an update button taking a couple of minutes, or milliseconds.

And I would even say that’s not true most of the time. Why is the update button slow?

- Is your customer in Asia and your servers are in us-east-1? Do we need a multi master database one in each region? Can we make even that faster by doing an eventually consistent write?

- do we really need a synchronous update process or can we use queues to make it more consistent?

- is our web server slow? Should we scale horizontally or vertically? Should we use autoscaling and if so which metric should we use? What should our cooldown time be between autoscaling events? Do we need to autoscale across regions? Where is our traffic coming from?

- is our database indexed properly? Did we look at our slow query logs? Did someone do something stupid like have triggers on our database unnecessarily? Is an RDMS the right choice? Do we need to denormalize the table?

- or is it our code?

This is the thought process my manager was looking for when he interviewed me. Not the best way to traverse a tree.

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

#140

Post by StreamBright » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

Learning Clojure opened my eyes big time. Since I have done that I can pick up other languages much more easily than before. The only problem I got is with Java, I could never grasp the different concepts of OOP but I do not actually mind that.