What Programming Langauge Are You Learning? | Hacker News Reader

What Programming Langauge Are You Learning?

7 pointsmudge26 comments

I'm always studying or learning some programming language. Lately I've been studying x86 assembly using NASM. What programming language are you learning?

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This is going to sound a tad trite but - the answer is all of them that I use. I never stop learning new ideas and it is just great when you get to switch a technique or construct fro one language to another.

One thing I have learned is that there is nothing that you can do in one language that you can't do in another (assuming Turing complete of course and excluding the odd API call with particularly strange data types - is that cheating?)

>One thing I have learned is that there is nothing that you can do in one language that you can't do in another

While this is true, I have also learned that there are significant differences in convenience and ease of development, that libraries matter a lot for actual applications (as opposed to experimenting to get the 'feel' for a language), and that the new concepts and coding-and-code-structuring conventions I learn along with a new language may be as important as the language itself.

Among my formative experiences, I'd list C, Lisp, Java (namespaces and Javadoc), Javascript and Erlang - they take quite different approaches to computing.

Rc shell right now, although I don't think there's much left to learn. Certainly far less than Bourne shell. Go, Lisp, and ARM assembler are vying for my attention next.

Go offers the most interesting possibilities but also looks the strangest to me. Lisp I'd be re-learning and expanding on my knowledge. ARM assembler for purposes of porting things but also I can't quite resist the low-level.

Google's Go (www.golang.org)

I'm also considering the "seven languages in seven weeks" book (http://www.pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-sev... ). I know some of those languages already, but I think it's worthwhile to spend a few weeks getting an overview of what else is out there.

  C - Refreshing knowledge by going through K&R and then CII
  C++ - Never taught properly at university, so bought Accelerated C++
  Java - just bought a copy of Effective Java

I'm starting to go to more local dev events as well, especially those based around Python and Ruby. Can anyone recommend any decent events around London for C++/Java/Scala?

A language I've discovered with delight is Cobra. It is python-like, with built-in unit test support, contract support, and currently on top of the .Net platform (but a backend is flexible enough that some work at targeting Java and Obj-C has been done).

http://cobra-language.com/

Clojure

me too, just bought the pragmatic programmers book.

The Manning chouser/fogus book is shaping up really well (and rhickey's talking about release of 1.2 soon!).

Get a MEAP discount code off their website:

http://manning.com/free/dotd.html

I am as well. If anyone is interested I have signed up for the following free course starting next week:

http://rubylearning.com/blog/2010/03/09/clojure-101-a-new-co...

As a long time perl developer, I'm dabbling in python and a little bit of ruby.

Today I am spending time on the semantics of exception handling in Orc.

http://orc.csres.utexas.edu/

For serious use:

scala/lift, clojure (and learning java through those 2!)

erlang, perl (yes, perl, I never used moose before)

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Will get serious at some point:

objective-C, OCaml, haskell,

F# (when i get VS2010 license)

Just Objective-C. One language at a time.

Messing around with csound.

Scheme

Seconded. I also like how many people are learning some ASM.

Haskell

erlang

The WAM (a VM design for Prolog).

Also, Joy.

haxe, targeting Flash; yeah I'm serious, haha!

PHP

Clojure

erlang

Currently trying making my homegrown arduino clone (right now using a breadboard version) and learning the Wiring language. Granted it isn't a complete language but just a library for C but they advertise it that way, I seriously dont know if it would be called a language or not.(Linguists have your say here)

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