121–130 of 183 posts
In many ways, SQL is the protocol by which we combine programs together.
For when the moderators inevitably change this post to reflect the page's actual title, here's the title under which it was originally submitted: I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it
Surely it's a piece of Arc doing that. I can't imagine time and time again somebody is wasting their time changing titles. Perhaps the delay is from the software waiting for a good (low load) time to fetch the page.
I think the titles are manually changed, because plenty of times descriptive titles are left intact.
To me, this list is great except for one small thing. - C - Prolog - Erlang - Smalltalk - Javascript - Hakell / ML /OCaml - LISP/Scheme/Clojure Javascript?! Over Ruby or Python or Lua? What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? From my experience there is only two reasons to learn Javascript: to be able to build web app…
> What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python?
The most (and plainly) obvious is; write programs that run on the widest deployed platform/distribution network by several orders of magnitude. That is mindbending and beautiful. Go use Javascript for several years to figure out the rest.
I'm interested in Erlang, have read a lot of good things about it lately. However I've not tried it yet because I don't see how it is going to help me... I already know some functional programming (Scala, Haskell) and I don't work with large, distributed software or databases. I'm afraid I'm going to learn it, not finding something useful to do with it, and then "forget" it.
I am more or less in the same boat. I picked up 'Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good'. Fun book, fun language, what other motivation does one need? ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If we stopped bickering so much about what is the "right language", "right framework", "right library" Programmers are sometimes maximizers rather than satisficers for this kind of thing. We don't want to know if something is ok and will get the job done, we want the best one. I think people argue for their language out of some sense of the network effects involved: if I can get more people using my language, there…
I don't think it's anywhere near that complicated. People argue about languages because languages become part of their identity: It's common to think of oneself as for example a "Lisp Programmer". And if a language is part of your identity than people saying less than amazing things about that language feels like an attack on you personally, and very quickly the discussion devolves into an argument that has nothing i…
(What do programming languages, operating systems, and text editors all have in common? They're big parts of people's identities...)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's anywhere near that complicated. People argue about languages because languages become part of their identity: It's common to think of oneself as for example a "Lisp Programmer". And if a language is part of your identity than people saying less than amazing things about that language feels like an attack on you personally, and very quickly the discussion devolves into an argument that has nothing i…
But why do programming languages become part of people's identity so readily, whereas many other things do not? (What do programming languages, operating systems, and text editors all have in common? They're big parts of people's identities...)
The boundary of our self is constantly spreading outwards onto the things around us. Seems to be part of human nature.
Just for a moment, consider who this man is and what he has done. We would all do well to take a step back and consider his manner of response. Notice that he continued learning new languages after creating Erlang (instead of just evangelizing it at the one true language). He did not immediately say "choose these three languages" as if they were the only ones you could possibly learn. Does it really help our professi…
What would I recommend learning?
- C
- Prolog
- Erlang (I'm biased)
- Smalltalk
- Javascript
- Hakell / ML /OCaml
- LISP/Scheme/Clojure
A couple of years should be enough (PER LANGUAGE).
Becoming a veteran polyglot is not the only way to break into the programming field. This is exactly the type of elitist BS that we don't need -- scaring beginners away by giving the impression that they face an insurmountable cliff from the start.
Should we also mention that they need a minimum of 3 master's and 2 doctorate degrees? I don't think I've heard of a single successful programmer with anything less. Surely no one has ever dropped out of college and acquired vast amounts of wealth at an early age by programming.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's anywhere near that complicated. People argue about languages because languages become part of their identity: It's common to think of oneself as for example a "Lisp Programmer". And if a language is part of your identity than people saying less than amazing things about that language feels like an attack on you personally, and very quickly the discussion devolves into an argument that has nothing i…
But why do programming languages become part of people's identity so readily, whereas many other things do not? (What do programming languages, operating systems, and text editors all have in common? They're big parts of people's identities...)