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Interesting language choices. I suppose they were picked to provide an introduction to various paradigms. Let's see: Ruby - Dynamically typed, scripting langua
by delluminatus 17y ago
Interesting language choices. I suppose they were picked to provide an introduction to various paradigms. Let's see:
Ruby - Dynamically typed, scripting language
Io - Not sure. Smalltalk-esque object orientation, I guess.
Prolog - Crazy logic programming!
Scala - Functional? JVM? (does he really need this and haskell and Clojure?)
Erlang - I guess this is like a demonstration of concurrency and actors? Or something?
Clojure - Woo! A lisp dialect!
Haskell - Functional, strongly-typed.
I think I would take out Scala and put in something more imperative and different, like Go, C#, or Lua. I might also replace Ruby with Python. I learned Ruby as my first language and I find myself using Python a lot more anyways (Ruby is sexier though, I admit). The idea itself might not be sound. (A language a week? Talk about a crash course!)
I'm tempted to get it anyways. It's a unique approach, so props to the author for that.
- plesn 17y agoAnother book taking this kind of horizontal approach explains different programming paradigms rather than concrete languages: "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi (http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html). It is IMHO a deeply illuminating book.
- gtani 17y agoYeah, CTMCP is becoming a SICP-like acronym. Here's the for Dummies version http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/VanRoyChapter.pdf http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/VanRoyChapter.pdf
- draegtun 17y agoIo - Not sure. Smalltalk-esque object orientation, I guess. They chose/described Io as being the The minimalist prototype language ref: http://www.pragprog.com/news/core-data-in-print-seven-languages http://www.pragprog.com/news/core-data-in-print-seven-langua...
- runevault 17y agosome of the section on IO is included in free preview, and looked interesting. I find it funny that most of the languages had some feature or the like to recommend them and why they are worth learning (Haskell = type system and functional purity, Clojure = a Lisp, Io for prototyping, Erlang for concurrency/actors, etc) but Scala is just "this is a hot new language". Especially since some things got knocked out for not offering anything you could not get in the other offered languages.
- gtani 17y agoother languages he could've included: - F# (my fav) - ocaml - common lisp - scheme - python - lua - factor