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

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

#151

Post by meko »

plinkplonk wrote: post #112
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,…

" its because they know exactly 1 language ," which language is this? I'm guessing Python.

Asked myself that question too but think the answer may be: "it doesn't matter, because that's not the point".

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

#152

Post by sanderjd »

gilbetron wrote: post #30

At this point I have almost 20 languages that I've used for at least two years, which is what I consider an decent bar for "knowing" a language. The problem I now have is that I don't know if I'll ever be able to master any language anymore. Mmmmaybe C, since I've used that fairly consistently, albeit on-and-off for 25 years. But whenever I get to an "if" or "for" or function declaration, I often have to look at an e…

IDEs are useful for this. Let them keep track of minutia like syntax rules and names of common but differently-named methods. I find also find that it only takes me about a day of picking a language back up to remember which way they've gone on most of these things.

This kind of gets at what I think is the big advantage of learning a bunch of languages: it gives you instincts for which things are minutia and which aren't. The things you listed that every language has but does differently, which are annoying to figure out and remember, that's the minutia.

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

#153

Post by didibus »

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,…

It just sounds like they know the domain space better then you. You seem to know less about the domain of a poisson clock then them.

Maybe because I'm also unfamiliar with it, I can't judge. But knowing the right set of algorithms to solve domain specific problem sounds language agnostic to me.

That said, I agree that you should also continue to learn about CS, learn more data-structures, more algorithms, explore newer techniques and paradigms. That includes learning new languages, but not only that.

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

#154

Post by klibertp »

marcosdumay wrote: post #108
viburnum wrote: post #87

I 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.

See Logtalk: https://logtalk.org/

Works with many Prologs, too.

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

#155

Post by gdy »

schwurb wrote: post #61
gdy wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

Now if you multiply these hypothetical two or three weeks by the hourly rate of someone who can learn, you'll get the cost of replacing the author with another employee.

My point is that the cost could've been much smaller.

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

#157

Post by dhash »

chaosite wrote: post #143
klibertp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly possible to know several languages in-depth. It just takes a lot of time and effort. Moreover, it gets easier with time and practice. Knowing N languages makes learning N+1 language just a bit easier. For me the turning point was around N == 10, since when learning a new language - and yes, in-depth, including idioms, stdlib, some external libraries, maybe some framework (if needed), and also some fact…

I mean, I basically agree with you, but I like your challenge. What about Rust's borrow checker? I considered it novel, but I'd love to find out it was stolen from somewhere.

Rust’s borrow checker was inspired by clean [1], which applied the same semantics to monads to allow in-place updates

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_(programming_language)

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

#158

Post by stephc_int13 »

I dislike this reasoning with passion. I tend to think the pleasure of learning a new programming language is rarely productive, except for newbies. I also think that our world would be a better place with fewer languages, we really have a lot of useless redundancy.

What we need, most of the time, is a good library tailored to solve a specific problem (string manipulation or complex maths could even be done in BASIC or asm with a powerful dedicated library)

Creating a new language is like forking a code base.

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

#159

Post by klibertp »

chaosite wrote: post #143
klibertp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly possible to know several languages in-depth. It just takes a lot of time and effort. Moreover, it gets easier with time and practice. Knowing N languages makes learning N+1 language just a bit easier. For me the turning point was around N == 10, since when learning a new language - and yes, in-depth, including idioms, stdlib, some external libraries, maybe some framework (if needed), and also some fact…

I mean, I basically agree with you, but I like your challenge. What about Rust's borrow checker? I considered it novel, but I'd love to find out it was stolen from somewhere.

I think it comes from Clean language or maybe Cyclone or other safe-C dialects. Not 100% sure though - I gave up on Rust some time back due to the churn and still didn't get to go back to it :( - and anyway, at this point the borrow checker is more than 10 years old, so hardly a new feature :D

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

#160

Post by blub »

klibertp wrote: post #126
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,…

It's perfectly possible to know several languages in-depth. It just takes a lot of time and effort. Moreover, it gets easier with time and practice. Knowing N languages makes learning N+1 language just a bit easier. For me the turning point was around N == 10, since when learning a new language - and yes, in-depth, including idioms, stdlib, some external libraries, maybe some framework (if needed), and also some fact…

I don't doubt it's possible.

What I do doubt, is that it's possible to know several languages in-depth and at the same time be at least very good in a specific domain (webdev & mobile apps are not domains), have good algo and problem-solving skills, have decent to good soft skills, know at least a little bit of PM and also be a good conversation partner and well informed citizen of the world, while also being a good husband/wife/dad and being reasonably competent at some hobby that is hopefully not related to computers.

Learning and keeping up to date with the N+1th language takes space from learning the many other interesting things this world has to offer.

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