Goal for 2011: Do not learn another programming language • Hacker News Board

Re: Goal for 2011: Do not learn another programming language

#11

Post by chopmo » Fri, Jan 14, 2011, 4:01 PM UTC

DrJokepu wrote: post #5

The author proves his own point by using C# as an example for a "boring and similar" language; he clearly doesn't know the language well enough if he truly believes that. That being said, there are two reasons you would want to learn a programming language: to add it to your tool set or to learn the concepts behind it, either for personal gain or to apply those concepts in other languages. I really don't think I will…

Well, the term "boring" is of course very subjective. I'm certainly not claiming that I have nothing left to learn from C#, I'm just not very interested in it right now, for various reasons.

Other than that, I completely agree with your thoughts on this.

Re: Goal for 2011: Do not learn another programming language

#12

Post by uriel » Fri, Jan 14, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

jesstaa wrote: post #4

CurrentB wrote: post #3

My compulsive frequent jumps to new programming languages have also settled down after learning Clojure, for pretty much the same reasons. I never really felt comfortable with any languages I've messed with, even as a novice programmer. I just feel so at home with Clojure and yet there is so much to learn and improve on that I should be busy with it for awhile. It really is a masterful blend of beauty and practicalit…

I've had the same frequent jumps between programming languages, most have never really felt right. I always loved C, but C is very handicapped for a lot of things I have to do. Erlang was close, communication processes really felt right. I once come across a language called 'Alef' which I feel in love with. But sadly it was no longer in development. Lucky for me 'Alef' closest cousin 'Go' was released in late 2009 an…

A nice thing about Go is that is a relatively small language, and you can grasp the whole language and have a chance of holding the whole thing in your head without going insane in the process.

And despite that, it has plenty of interesting and fun parts like the implicit-interfaces type system, etc.

Re: Goal for 2011: Do not learn another programming language

#13

Post by chopmo » Fri, Jan 14, 2011, 5:00 PM UTC

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #9

sophacles wrote: post #2

This reminds me of the old adage: "A jack of all trades is a master of none". I totally agree that learning new programming languages is great, and can help someone get a lot of new concepts. It certainly is fantastic for learning to separate syntax from algorithms from styles of thought. However I have found that there is a point of diminishing returns. There is only so much you can get from learning e.g. 5 differen…

At some point in your programming career, you should learn an ALGOL-descendant (C, C++, C#, Java, etc), a Lisp-descendant (CL, Scheme, etc), A Prolog-descendant (Prolog itself, maybe SQL as a programming language), A Forth (better yet, read Starting Forth by Leo Brodie and write your own), an ML-descendant (like Haskell) and an APL-descendant like J. Nearly every language leans heavily upon one of these foundations.

Most of us are exposed to SQL during our careers, but I expect that few think of it as a programming language. Can you recommend any good resources in this area?

BTW where would you say that Erlang belongs in this picture?