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That's true of any language. Even within the same language paradigm. If you know C#/Java then learn C++ or vice versa and it'll affect the way you think about

That's true of any language. Even within the same language paradigm. If you know C#/Java then learn C++ or vice versa and it'll affect the way you think about programming. Go outside of the statically typed OO world and try out the dynamically typed OO languages like ruby or python. Even better, learn a weakly typed procedural language like C ( lingua franca for CS ). Or choose an architecture and learn some assembly. Now that will affect the way you think about programming. Move out of onto a different domain altogether and try one of the flavors of a declarative language like SQL. Learning a bit here and there of many different languages and paradigms will affect the way you think. Clojure isn't special. You can even just stay within a framework and try to get a deep understanding of .Net language/IL/Framework Libraries/Runtime stack. Then you get into the debate of breadth vs depth. Should you learn one language/framework/paradigm exceptionally well or should you learn a bit about a lot of a lot languages/paradigms?

jasonkostempski 9y ago
That is true. Heck, eating a particular meal might affect the way you think about programming. But the article title, and the original HN title, is "Clojure - the perfect language to expand your brain?" So it's asking if Clojure is better at it than other languages/paradigms.
- davidreiss 9y ago
  > So it's asking if Clojure is better at it than other languages/paradigms. My argument was that there are such a wide variety of languages/frameworks/paradigms that it makes no sense to make such a claim. Someone from a functional background ( lets say you know scheme or ML ) would get more from learning an OO language than from learning clojure. He'd learn more from learning assembly and seeing how data moves in and out of registers than from learning clojure. Programming is such a wide topic. We get this posts all the time. Go will expand your mind more than anything or ruby will or F# or any other flavor of the day or even python. It all depends on who you are and what you know. In other words "Clojure - the perfect language to expand your brain?" is a silly assertion. There is no "perfect language" because everyone's brains are different because we all come with different backgrounds and expertise. But that's just my opinion.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

That is true. Heck, eating a particular meal might affect the way you think about programming. But the article title, and the original HN title, is "Clojure - the perfect language to expand your brain?" So it's asking if Clojure is better at it than other languages/paradigms.

davidreiss 9y ago
> So it's asking if Clojure is better at it than other languages/paradigms. My argument was that there are such a wide variety of languages/frameworks/paradigms that it makes no sense to make such a claim. Someone from a functional background ( lets say you know scheme or ML ) would get more from learning an OO language than from learning clojure. He'd learn more from learning assembly and seeing how data moves in and out of registers than from learning clojure. Programming is such a wide topic. We get this posts all the time. Go will expand your mind more than anything or ruby will or F# or any other flavor of the day or even python. It all depends on who you are and what you know. In other words "Clojure - the perfect language to expand your brain?" is a silly assertion. There is no "perfect language" because everyone's brains are different because we all come with different backgrounds and expertise. But that's just my opinion.