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Being confidently programming language agnostic

blog.bradfieldcs.com

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Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#11

Post by imdsm »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #8

I used to arrogantly think I could be productive in any language given a week or so to adapt. I often used the phrase "a good dev is a good dev in any language." That belief was rather abruptly broken when I joined a project using C++/CX it was so far outside of my previous experience that I had a really bad time of it. I happily picked up the actual language very quickly. It was the surrounding ecosystem of compiler…

I agree. It's not always the language which makes it tough to integrate yourself into a project, sometimes it's all the frameworks, libraries, build tools, and general makeup of the project itself.

I worked for a company a few years back doing ASP.NET (my experience is mostly Linux based tech, but you can pick up a language, right?). The language was fine, the design patterns used all quite standard, but the project had an array of frameworks and libraries which made maintaining it painstaking.

In fact, I think you worked on it too.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#12

Post by zzzcpan »

I think Norvig and the author are wrong about "parallelism" requirement. I mean it's good to know what's out there, but you can't really understand it if you try to learn it from a multithreading point of view. Fundamentals for it are part of distributed systems and this is where people should get into and learn things about ordering, consensus, asynchronous and synchronous systems, etc.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#13

Post by closeparen »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #2

I know formal education often gets a lot of criticism around HN, but I think the approach the article is talking about is heavily mirrored in most university computer science curriculums. Universities tend to focus on paradigms and patterns, and typically force a student to learn at least 3 languages throughout their education (much more if they want to). Just in my undergrad I learned C, C++, C#, Objective C, Swift,…

Yes! My university CS program focused on teaching you to think about computation, with the particular language you'd express your thoughts in as an interchangeable detail.

Scheme for beginners, Python for web scraping and data munging, C for concurrent network and systems programming, and some small exposure to Java, Haskell, Standard ML, awk, yacc/lex, C++, and your mobile environment of choice depending on which classes you took.

Many were upset by this "very theoretical" approach, as they'd prefer to have immediately employable skills in JS-framework-of-the-week. Instead they were taught how to think independently of a particular language, and to get comfortable with learning new ones.

From a programming craft perspective, it was a little disappointing that we were never focused on advanced language features or idiomatic code, but I felt I had a solid enough base to self-teach that sort of thing.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#14

Post by nextos »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #2

I know formal education often gets a lot of criticism around HN, but I think the approach the article is talking about is heavily mirrored in most university computer science curriculums. Universities tend to focus on paradigms and patterns, and typically force a student to learn at least 3 languages throughout their education (much more if they want to). Just in my undergrad I learned C, C++, C#, Objective C, Swift,…

The perfect example of this approach is Concepts, Models, and Techniques of Computer Programming. It covers a wide range of paradigms [1] using Oz/Mozart and it also shows examples using many famous languages.

[1] https://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/VanRoyChapter.pdf

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#15

Post by ams6110 »

closeparen wrote: post #13
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #2

I know formal education often gets a lot of criticism around HN, but I think the approach the article is talking about is heavily mirrored in most university computer science curriculums. Universities tend to focus on paradigms and patterns, and typically force a student to learn at least 3 languages throughout their education (much more if they want to). Just in my undergrad I learned C, C++, C#, Objective C, Swift,…

Yes! My university CS program focused on teaching you to think about computation, with the particular language you'd express your thoughts in as an interchangeable detail. Scheme for beginners, Python for web scraping and data munging, C for concurrent network and systems programming, and some small exposure to Java, Haskell, Standard ML, awk, yacc/lex, C++, and your mobile environment of choice depending on which cl…

Same with my degree program. Learning the programming language used for any particular class was an "exercise left to the student."

After I finished my undergrad degree I had an "exit interview" and I mentioned that this was one of the things I liked about the curriculum, because it helped me see that the abstract computing theory is what is important, and languages are largely a matter of syntax and convenience. The professor's response was that they so often hear the opposite, that students complain that they don't learn languages that employers want.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#17

Post by paulddraper »

achikin wrote: post #7

I think nowadays people spend too much time learning new tools and too less time doing something really valuable using that tools. I wish I had only one language, so I can concentrate on more interesting things rather than learning yet another random set of operators and library function's names.

While using fewer, better languages for more is fantastic, I doubt you really want a single language.

Try replacing shell, Structured Query Language, and C with the same language. I won't say that it can't be done, but I think you'll lose a lot if you succeed.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#18

Post by preordained »

achikin wrote: post #7

I think nowadays people spend too much time learning new tools and too less time doing something really valuable using that tools. I wish I had only one language, so I can concentrate on more interesting things rather than learning yet another random set of operators and library function's names.

I'm with you. A standard set of languages/tools would be great, so you don't have to pay a cognitive overhead cost every time before you dive in. It's fatiguing. It adds up. I much more enjoy the act of programming than learning a new tool or language....and then getting on with the real work.

Pipe dream, it would seem, but: I feel like the energy spent picking up new things could be used so much better going deeper and building more with established tools--tools hardened by collective reuse.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#19

Post by RivieraKid »

After you have some experience with, say, 3 to 5 different languages, you can learn new ones very quickly (hours, days) with little effort because you know almost all of the core concepts (OOP, FP, mutability, generics, ...). There's no point in learning "all of the languages" for its own sake. Just learn a bunch of different ones to learn different ideas and programming styles.

What takes more time is the standard library, common libraries, tools. A good example of that is iOS development in Swift. Learning the language is almost negligible compared to learning all of the technologies and tools. But coming from Android, I think I'm close to about 50 % of full productivity after two weeks.

I never understood why there's so much focus on the "x years experience in y" in the industry. A solid developer should be able to become fluent in any language and technology within a month or two.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#20

Post by morgante »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #2

I know formal education often gets a lot of criticism around HN, but I think the approach the article is talking about is heavily mirrored in most university computer science curriculums. Universities tend to focus on paradigms and patterns, and typically force a student to learn at least 3 languages throughout their education (much more if they want to). Just in my undergrad I learned C, C++, C#, Objective C, Swift,…

I agree that's what they aim for, but in my experience far too many CS grads (especially from non-top universities) have absolutely no understanding of the core paradigms. Instead, they've basically memorized "this is how I make a linked list in Java." Ask them to do the same exact task in another language and they're totally stumped.
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