laziness, impatience, and hubris | |
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Re: Why learn another language?by Aristotle (Chancellor) |
on Nov 16, 2002 at 20:39 UTC ( [id://213444]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. Languages follow varying paradigmata. Each one allows you to approach problem from a different conceptual perspective. The fewer paradigmata you know, the more conceptual blind spots you have - all the world looks like nails if you are a hammer. In Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, Peter Norvig gives his recipe for programming success, and one of the points is: Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. Include one language that supports class abstractions (like Java or C++), one that supports functional abstraction (like Lisp or ML), one that supports syntactic abstraction (like Lisp), one that supports declarative specifications (like Prolog or C++ templates), one that supports coroutines (like Icon or Scheme), and one that supports parallelism (like Sisal). Although I'd rather suggest Smalltalk as the language to teach class abstraction paradigma: I made up the term object-oriented, and I can tell you I didn't have C++ in mind. Makeshifts last the longest.
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