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> There's no way you learn the One Practical Language That Matters and can be limited to it. Most mainstream languages have very similar semantics overall, dif
by dom0 10y ago
> There's no way you learn the One Practical Language That Matters and can be limited to it.
Most mainstream languages have very similar semantics overall, differing wildly from FP-like approaches. So learning a mainstream-ish (imperative-ish, OO-ish) language will enable mastering other mainstream languages with greater ease.
If my first language is Lisp-1944, I'll likely have a hard time learning C or Java. If, on the other hand, my first language was C, I'll likely have much more and quicker success with Java, Python, C#...
- nine_k 10y agoIf the first language you learned was C, and you never rethought programming from different angles, you'll miss the best parts of JavaScript, Python, and a serious part of C# at least. OTOH if your first language was Lisp (or even Python, to a lesser extent), and it was competently taught, the syntax of Java or C# would feel alien at first, but you'd find out that many of the concepts are already known to you; chances are, you even have an idea how they work under the hood. (Disclaimer: I majored in embedded systems, my first languages were Fortran IV and PDP-11 assembly.)