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Ask HN: What programming language are you currently learning?

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Re: Ask HN: What programming language are you currently learning?

#13
(1) Haskell, because I like functional programming, and this language seems very promising (I first looked at it 10 years ago, but I gave up because the implementations seemed immature. I took another look recently, and I'm amazed by how much it's progressed since then). I especially like the way that laziness and purity enable a concise, stream-processing paradigm through the use of maps, folds, and various combinators.

(2) Lua, because it seems like the Scheme of imperative scripting languages, while still being very practical and hackerish. It also has a neat game engine (Love2d) which I'm eager to try out.

Re: Ask HN: What programming language are you currently learning?

#20
I'm not learning any language right now, but have learned a fair share over the course of the past few years.

My general criteria is not to learn a language that is conceptually similar to something you already know unless there are professional advances to be had there. If all you know is Python, C might be good because it's lower level. Lisp or Haskell or O'Caml might be good because you'll have to program with different paradigms, etc. If I were coming from Python, Ruby wouldn't be my next choice unless I needed it for a job.

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