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Being confidently programming language agnostic

blog.bradfieldcs.com

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Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#21

Post by kochthesecond »

morgante wrote: post #20
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.

My experience is the opposite, that those with formal education have a much higher chance of having grasped the concepts, over the language libraries.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#22

Post by pfarnsworth »

I've been programming for 20+ years, and recently moved over to Python. Sure, I could code on day one and figure out how to get programs working pretty easily. But the nuances with it are still things I need to work on a lot. I still don't program Pythonicly, I program like a C programmer writing Python. In fact, I probably program in all languages like I would a C programmer, and that's not good enough, in my opinion.

I have fallen in love with Python because it's so damn easy to get productive, and I really want to be a great Python programmer. That takes a lot more time than the OP suggests, and requires you to immerse yourself in the patterns of the language and in the community, in my opinion. Not just dabble a bit and then check a box saying "I'm a polyglot!"

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#23

Post by tlarkworthy »

preordained wrote: post #18
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…

I am sick of having to rewrite difficult data structures. I though if haxe could compile libraries I might never have to. But maybe just doing everything in rust might be a better approach?

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#24

Post by gravypod »

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 think the top-10 universities do it right and the rest don't. (This is a bit of an exaggeration but you most likely know what I mean).

Most of my classmates don't usually "learn" a language. They do an assignment by copying, hammering at the computer, or just asking for help. The basis of how university is set up is antithetical to the learning and exploration of new programming languages. This is based on one simple thing that most universities do and is very easy to fix.

   Don't mandate a programming language for you assignments
If this one thing was done, we'd probably instantly see a much higher failure rate and a much hire quality of turnout. If early on in the curriculum students got a tour of every one of the big name languages and got to just choose the best tool for the job for the rest of their time at university there'd be a much closer approximation to how things (at least for me) work.

If one of your projects is something like "scrape a webpage for X data" you wouldn't want to write that in a bash script (which I've been made to do [0]) I'd want to do that in Python with BS4. Or if your project is to write a parallel dot product function you wouldn't want to write that in C (which I've been made to do [1]). I'd want to write that in Julia.

Even in my class that I took for exploring programming languages we were forced to use C++. We were writing an interpreter using C++ which I'd rather have done in some Lisp-like languages.

Unfortunatly I've not been able to make the design decition to play with other language (in school) to see how they will better impact the development of these applications. I've not had to prototype stuff to see what language it will work best in (in school). These are decitions made for me.

I've found that this isn't how things work, at least for me, and I'm the one who is told "Do X" and I pick a way to do it. Whether it's by setting up a spreadsheet it a macro in it that generates the data or writing some real code. I get to choose the most elegant solution and I suffer the consequences then I didn't choose the most elegant solution since I have to my software when it breaks 2 years down the line.

[0] - https://web.njit.edu/~sohna/cs288/hw3.html [1] - https://web.njit.edu/~sohna/cs288/hw10.html

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#25

Post by no_wizard »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #22

I've been programming for 20+ years, and recently moved over to Python. Sure, I could code on day one and figure out how to get programs working pretty easily. But the nuances with it are still things I need to work on a lot. I still don't program Pythonicly, I program like a C programmer writing Python. In fact, I probably program in all languages like I would a C programmer, and that's not good enough, in my opinio…

May I suggest this book specifically tailored for python best practices? https://jeffknupp.com/writing-idiomatic-python-ebook/

Its a wonderful read. Will really unleash the pythonista inside of all us!

If you really want to go deeper, I suggest these as well:

https://goo.gl/CY6zPu https://goo.gl/UbMrTb

Those shortened links take you to amazon (not affiliated in any way, FYI, just though the length of the URLs was obnoxious)

Those are the definitive python programming books I came up with anyway.

While we are at, I have to say once I learned to really code Pythonically I find that I can apply the PEP8 standards to almost any language. Admittedly, I, like John Siracusa, am a top level language debutante and don't live in C or C++ production code (I sometimes use objc but swift is...easier :). I remember learning C, and thanks to arduino I certainly using some varient of C/c++ there more heavily, but my coding style follows more or less the pythonic standard (with PEP8 being the backbone of that).

food for thought, people of hacker news!

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#26

Post by morgante »

kochthesecond wrote: post #21
morgante wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My experience is the opposite, that those with formal education have a much higher chance of having grasped the concepts, over the language libraries.

You might have only worked with students from top CS programs.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#27

Post by SlySherZ »

lucidguppy wrote: post #16

I think that learning C before C++ might hurt you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWhqhNdYyk

Note: I didn't watch the video yet and my opinion might change by then.

C teaches you something very useful, which is how the computer works under the hood. Most things you do in C loosely match to what the computer does, and learning C helps you understanding the computer.

I'm not saying that it's a good language to start with, but it's okay. Unlike C++.

IMO, C++ is the worst possible language to start with. The reason for this is that C++ tries to support everything, often using handy but cryptic syntax. C++ doesn't guide you to program one way or another, it simply adapts to every possible way to solve the problem. This might be good on the hands of someone that already knows how to solve the problem, but it's completly overwhelming for a begginer. It feels like you're taking the wrong turn at every step.

A much better alternative would be JavaScript. Yes, it does have flaws, but it's much simpler and has personality.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#28

Post by no_wizard »

gravypod wrote: post #24
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 think the top-10 universities do it right and the rest don't. (This is a bit of an exaggeration but you most likely know what I mean). Most of my classmates don't usually "learn" a language. They do an assignment by copying, hammering at the computer, or just asking for help. The basis of how university is set up is antithetical to the learning and exploration of new programming languages. This is based on one simp…

To be fair, and I don't have your context on this, but looking at your link of the assignment for [0] it appears to me that this is more of an exercise in getting people comfortable with more advanced bash features, specifically looks like it relies fairly heavy on regex? I agree that BS4 is a better tool for this job, certainly, but there is perhaps a point in what is going on here too.

As far as the second one goes, I bet that has more to do with the professors particular familiarity with C than it does an understanding of what the best tool of the job for that is. I'll cede that point :)

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#29

Post by idobai »

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,…

Most universities introduce young students to programming with C/C++ and depending on the orientation they'll either learn Java or C#(if the university prefers ms) or JS/PHP. Other languages used to be optional or presented as they're inferior just because they're less popular. Most students won't proceed with functional programming languages if the university concentrates on procedural programming and how to "memorize" the code instead of understanding it. This is how the stackoverflow-copy-paste coders born.

Re: Being confidently programming language agnostic

#30

Post by no_wizard »

dargueta wrote: post #10
sambe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree so much. I had a very theoretical course and am often shocked at how reluctant my peers are to investigate a problem in a language they don't already know (normally just one or max two). Also, if they need to quickly munge some text they'll have a dozen Java classes and several poms. I think this has real practical consequences for decision making (not knowing alternatives etc).

Also agree. My programming languages course had me writing code in Racket, Julia, Erlang, Prolog, and Haskell, in addition to the languages that all students had to use for certain classes (C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript, Assembly, and C#)

This reminds me of something my CS professor/mentor told me once.

'Teach how to program C, you will give them a job. Teach someone how to LISP, and they will keep learning forever'

We learned a lot of LISP and Functional based programming from this guy. I mean a lot. Fun times I do miss!

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