Ask HN: What programming language will you learn in 2014?
After a long research I decided to learn Haskell. It is very unlikely that I will ever be paid to use it, but I am pretty sure that after more than 10 years experience in programming, Haskell will greatly benefit my programming skills and thinking.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 89.6 ms ] threadThis year, I am currently torn between:
-Haskell (to go full blown functional crazy) -Smalltalk (to go full blown object crazy) -Javascript (to finally write some stuff for the web/browsers) - Java (to sell out and lose the will to live?)
Any advice is more than welcome. I'm probably looking for the "programming language that changes the way you think" aspect, since I've already got a paying job...
PiL will present examples that will change the way you think in several different ways, which you will then be able to leverage in any other programming language (most of the time, depending on how restrictive the language is).
Lisp OTOH is a multi-paradigm languages with much more emphasis on OO and interactive development. Lisp is much more diverse and favors a very different programming style - slightly more pragmatic. Lisp had its main application domain in AI, but nowadays it's a bit more diverse - often it is used by individuals or small teams. One of the larger applications is the flight search engine of Google. Others are in music composition, planning and scheduling (satellites, people, logistics, ...), etc.
I'm trying to revisit statistical modelling and pick up some machine learning basics over the next year.
or what about domains barely related to computer science, but where coding is an invaluable skill, like medicine/genetics, manufacturing, or aerospace?
consider how many programming languages your average person knows (zero). now consider how many you know. is it objectively worth your time optimizing around that particular dimension within your skills, or are you perhaps suffering from a latent bias you have from the fact that you are a relative expert in programming?
would you rather have a carpenter who knows how to use a dozen hammers, or a wide variety of tools? is haskell a new tool, or is it just another hammer for you? with coursera you have no excuse to avoid stepping outside your comfort zone!
There's a danger in what you're suggesting, in overgeneralizing and never learning too much about one topic. Would you rather have a carpenter who's an okay carpenter, an okay musician, an okay actor, and an okay racecar driver, or a carpenter who's really good at carpenting?
If I had to pick a point of leverage with which to increase programming skill in minimal time, "learn a new programming language" would be far down the list if two or three for various contexts were already well mastered. "Learn Haskell", almost universally, would be near the bottom.
On the other hand I strongly dislike the "in minimal time" condition. After let's say 10 years or more in programming (that's me in this case) and you say that the next step one could achieve is something that comes faster than learning a new programming paradigm? My gut feeling is that it will take me about 6 months with a strong programming background. I am not talking about learning Haskell (What could it be: a week or so?) but about understanding FP, knowing (and feeling) the fp design patterns. Depending on the investment in 6 months one probably can achieve that the application of those patterns come as second nature. That's my goal. Two questions:
1) What would give greater and longer-term benefits than that? Learning Reactive Extensions? Yet another ORM framework? Node.js? Those are only tools. One can learn them in some days when a project requires it.
2) What is the rush for? Do you remember the time you learnt OO programming? I would say to learn it properly, in the beginning of your career as most of us do it, required much more effort than to learn Haskell and FP when you are already an experienced programmer. Wasn't it worth to spend all that time to learn OO principles, design-patterns, tools, languages? And if you were stuck in the OO world throughout your career, then I am pretty sure that learning FP principles, patterns and language(s) have about the same effect on your future than OO had on your present expertise.
as far as your first point goes, I agree that some type of random walk part is important to breaking out of local maxima. you can look to social cues for what might be a good thing to start learning about that is outside of your comfort zone. generally speaking since software is eating the world a good litmus test for me is if the domain seems to be amenable to automation and is also not as far along the curve as more "easy" domains to dive into like the latest newfangled way to build a web based CRUD app.
> 1) What would give greater and longer-term benefits than that? Learning Reactive Extensions? Yet another ORM framework? Node.js? Those are only tools. One can learn them in some days when a project requires it.
I think that unless something is completely and utterly trivial, you can't really learn it in 'some days'. You can get enough of an understanding of it to solve a small-medium problem with it, but you can't actually learn it. If you want to learn something really weird, try playing with higher-order polymorphism, type theory, dependent types, or something that's not 'yet another OO language/framework'.
> 2) What is the rush for? Do you remember the time you learnt OO programming? I would say to learn it properly, in the beginning of your career as most of us do it, required much more effort than to learn Haskell and FP when you are already an experienced programmer.
Not for me. Really learning Haskell as an experienced programmer took as long as it took to learn Python as a novice, and I've heard similar reports from other people. I certainly agree that if you know, say, Java, learning C# probably isn't going to maximize your 'skill increase per time'. But saying that going from Java to Haskell, or even farther to something super-weird like Agda or Forth or Prolog, is just as easy as going from Java to C# is just wrong.
Personally, the reason I'm sticking with Haskell as my current thing-to-learn as opposed to jumping to other things is that I've hit that point in the curve where the language is really opening up to me; I had a small problem recently that I wanted to solve, and I was able to use some really cool techniques that don't really have simple equivalences in other languages (the pipes library, if you're curious) to solve it in a nice way.
That was exactly my point, sorry if it wasn't clear.
> Really learning Haskell as an experienced programmer took as long as it took to learn Python as a novice, and I've heard similar reports from other people. I certainly agree that if you know, say, Java, learning C# probably isn't going to maximize your 'skill increase per time'. But saying that going from Java to Haskell, or even farther to something super-weird like Agda or Forth or Prolog, is just as easy as going from Java to C# is just wrong.
I am not saying that the "Java after C#" learning curve is the same as "Haskell after C#". It isn't. But I believe that the general experience of abstract thinking that one learns in many years must give an advantage over a novice learner. I am not talking about a script-kiddie who spent five years hacking code, or somebody who has the same one year experience 20 times instead of real 20 year experience. I believe that if you spent your development life actively then you must get a new concept easier than a beginner. And not only that. Concepts of a paradigm or language leak into others. Linq in .Net leverages "monads". Eric Meijer, one of the creators of Linq, loves Haskell and they borrowed ideas from Haskell. Now, if one is a "too pragmatic" programmer, they can use Linq for years successfully and never get closer to understand monads. However is one takes the time and looks behind the curtains, they got closer to understand at least this one concept of Haskell. And I am pretty sure that over let's say 10 years you are exposed to many ideas in some way if you keep your eyes open.
As I said, my gut feeling (can't tell how good the estimation is) is that in about six months I "get Haskell and fp". But it's not black or white: obviously spending 6 more years in the fp world would make a difference. There must be a decision made (and here I agree with gfodor) when the further gain doesn't justify the investment. I won't stop at 6th month if I don't feel the power yet :)
- Ada : everybody raves about it but nobody uses it ;-) - Python : for everyday hacks, it's portable, simple and it's not Java ;-) - Assembly : it's the root of everything - C : my mind is overflowing with Arduino projects - C++ : I'd love to create ISX extensions and make private bots for some MMO - Prolog : just because
I will probably settle for Ada if John Barnes publish its book at the beginning of 2014.
One app: web, windows, mac, linux. I know that can be done with other tools too, but this is the one I've chosen. I like SQL too: old guys like weird tools!
* It's memory safe
* concurrent (using light weight tasks like Erlang)
* practical (in terms of syntax, semantics)
It's also being used to develop the next generation of browser engine: Servo
http://rust-lang.org/
Your answer to this topic is only interesting if you explain why. Even a very brief explanation will do. As it happens, I've never heard of Elixir. Try to make me curious enough to google it.
In my case, I'll likely not try to learn any new language this year. But I am going to brush-up on the mathematics that has gotten rusty over the years. Partly because I used to like math, but now rarely get to use anything beyond basic algebra. And partly to position myself better to help my kid with homework.
I think there's a lot of interesting ideas around high availability and fault tolerance to explore in the Erlang world, and I'd like to tap into that.