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Author Topic: Tour of Programming Languages  (Read 6526 times)

mouser

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Tour of Programming Languages
« on: March 05, 2006, 10:23 PM »

http://www.cabochon....s/tour-de-babel.html

Tour de Babel
(published September 2004)
This is my whirlwind languages tour - the one I was going to write for the Amazon Developers Journal this month, but couldn't find a way to do it that was... presentable.




[link from coding horror]

Rover

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Re: Tour of Programming Languages
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2006, 11:40 AM »
Interesting read.... I've never been a big fan of C++ and didn't know why.  I'm not sure the article contains the reason, but at least it gives me an excuse.  ;)

I've been debating over Ruby vs. Python for a little while.  I'm still not sure where I want to jump next, but I do agree with 1 big statement in the article: "OOP SUCKS!"

$0.02
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superboyac

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Re: Tour of Programming Languages
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2006, 01:35 PM »
That's very interesting...I've always said I'm not a programmer by any means, however, when I was doing my undergraduate work at Berkeley, I had to take a class for programming, and the program we used was lisp with emacs.  It was a great fun class for me, since all my other classes were pretty dull with engineering and sciences.  But it THAT is real programming, then I have to say that I wasn't so bad at it!  I did really well in the class, and I was very enthusiastic about it (plus I met the girl I had a crush on in there, so I was able to help her!)  I would have taken more classes in programming, but I had no desire to unnecessarily prolong graduation.  Anyway, it's good to know that I was learning an authentic language and that I potentially had the mind for it.  I always thought lisp was just a kiddie's programming language, with all the parantheses and commands, as if I were programming my TI calculater (which I was really good at actually).  I remember my calculus teacher in high school would call me at home for two reasons--either to tell my parents I was talking too much in class or to ask me to write a program for the calculater to transfer to the other students.

So that's the extent of my programming history: Ti Calculaters, and Lisp.  Now I'm going to pretend like I know everything about programming!

superboyac

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Re: Tour of Programming Languages
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2006, 01:40 PM »
Oh man, I love the attitude this guy has in his essay, it's great.  Check this line out:
On the other hand, in addition to being a language, a virtual machine, a huge set of class libraries, a security model, and a portable bytecode format, Java is a religion. So you can't trust anyone who loves it too much. It's a tricky business to hire good Java programmers.

 ;D I don't know, that made me laugh out loud.

Oh my gosh, I'm dying here!!:
There are "better" languages than Perl - hell, there are lots of them, if you define "better" as "not being insane". Lisp, Smalltalk, Python, gosh, I could probably name 20 or 30 languages that are "better" than Perl, inasmuch as they don't look like that Sperm Whale that exploded in the streets of Taiwan over the summer. Whale guts everywhere, covering cars, motorcycles, pedestrians. That's Perl. It's charming, really.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2006, 01:48 PM by superboyac »

mouser

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Re: Tour of Programming Languages
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2006, 05:08 PM »
i am a well known LISP hater and OOP lover so i can't say i share this guys views but i love the way he writes.

superboyac

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Re: Tour of Programming Languages
« Reply #5 on: March 07, 2006, 02:10 AM »
It's funny to hear you say that mouser.  He pretty much had me convinced, but like I said, I don't know jack about programming.  Oh well, I loved reading it, it was so freakin funny.  I think it made me realize what a cranky, computer geek I really am.