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I agree with the risk/reward thing. I think you need to take into account how likely you are to use the language before investing a lot into it. I ignore small

by dajt 9y ago

I agree with the risk/reward thing. I think you need to take into account how likely you are to use the language before investing a lot into it. I ignore smalltalk, ruby, perl, python, all that stuff. I don't want to use them, and somthing like smalltalk probably won't earn me money. Rust and D are similar. I've always thought D was interesting but I can't see it being worth my while to put the effort into it. Rust is just too different to bother with unless it becomes the new C++. I think swift might be worth a look, as long as Apple doesn't drop it like dylan. It is close enough to what I know that it might not take an age to learn. CL is good for nerd-cred, and gives a good leg up for Clojure. It probably also has some fundamental lesson to teach different to what I know instinctively. So I keep poking at it hoping it will click one day. Clojure seems like it would be a good thing to be able to claim knowledge of.

KirinDave 9y ago
I dunno if you find this worthwhile, but I have shipped code in about a dozen languages in my career, with languages like CL among them. For me, I really don't regret learning any of them, and they all had something to teach me that I've carried forward. For example, learning Common Lisp really let me internalize the concept of programming a meta-language to make my actual job easier (I later went on at that same job to write a very large, sophisticated code generator for a lot of humdrum deserializers). Learning Erlang helped me realize what a distributed system really is. Learning Java helped me understand what good concurrent threaded programs based around semaphores and queues could really god. Learning C# helped me realize there was a whole another level than that. Learning Clojure helped me realize we could use STM in the real world. I could go on. But all of these things are things I carry with me to this day. I don't do it for "nerd cred." I do it to grow as a software engineer.
- dajt 9y ago
  "I do it to grow as a software engineer" That's why I keep poking at CL, and don't bother much with the others. I don't think I'll get much of a paradigm shift from D or python but if I ever grok CL properly I'll feel I've learned something.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    If you just want to extract the juicy bits, may I recommend "Let Over Lambda." https://letoverlambda.com/ https://letoverlambda.com/

by dajt 9y ago

KirinDave 9y ago

I dunno if you find this worthwhile, but I have shipped code in about a dozen languages in my career, with languages like CL among them. For me, I really don't regret learning any of them, and they all had something to teach me that I've carried forward. For example, learning Common Lisp really let me internalize the concept of programming a meta-language to make my actual job easier (I later went on at that same job to write a very large, sophisticated code generator for a lot of humdrum deserializers). Learning Erlang helped me realize what a distributed system really is. Learning Java helped me understand what good concurrent threaded programs based around semaphores and queues could really god. Learning C# helped me realize there was a whole another level than that. Learning Clojure helped me realize we could use STM in the real world. I could go on. But all of these things are things I carry with me to this day. I don't do it for "nerd cred." I do it to grow as a software engineer.

dajt 9y ago
"I do it to grow as a software engineer" That's why I keep poking at CL, and don't bother much with the others. I don't think I'll get much of a paradigm shift from D or python but if I ever grok CL properly I'll feel I've learned something.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  If you just want to extract the juicy bits, may I recommend "Let Over Lambda." https://letoverlambda.com/ https://letoverlambda.com/