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In case anyone isn't familiar with them, these two books[1][2] from the Pragmatic Programmer are great for doing just this. They offer a guided intro to 7 diffe

by cnasc 8y ago

In case anyone isn't familiar with them, these two books[1][2] from the Pragmatic Programmer are great for doing just this. They offer a guided intro to 7 different languages each, and they're a whole lot of fun. [1] https://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks https://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-we... [2] https://pragprog.com/book/7lang/seven-more-languages-in-seven-weeks https://pragprog.com/book/7lang/seven-more-languages-in-seve...

mlevental 8y ago
nice books
Lowkeyloki 8y ago
I loved the first one. It's one of my all-time favorite technical books. I was really disappointed by the second, though. I'd recommend skipping it. The second lacked the cohesion of the first probably owing to the fact that it wasn't written by the same author as the first. And each chapter was written by a different author.
300bps 8y ago
I learned programming from books like The Waite Group's Turbo-C Bible around 1989. In trying to teach my oldest son programming through using modern books, it seemed much more difficult. IDEs and languages change so rapidly that books (and even online tutorials) are dated quickly. Menu options change, links stop working, etc. It made my son more frustrated when he was first starting.
macintux 8y ago
The first book led me to discover Erlang, which literally changed my life. Great resource.
- byebyetech 8y ago
  Could you please elaborate on how it changed your life? I am interested in learning Elixir and wondering if you can give some words of encouragement, assuming it changed your life positively :)
  - macintux 7y ago
    Falling in love with Erlang led me to create a Twitter account to share information about it, which helped me find and land a job with Basho, which was by far my favorite job, even if the company ended badly. So, that part is difficult to replicate. Setting that aside, Erlang finally helped me understand what functional programming is about (I'd tried and failed to grasp Lisp on a few occasions), taught me the value of immutability and asynchronous message passing, really opened my eyes to the fact that there's a vast world outside the tired Algol family tree. Sadly, pattern matching and immutability have made it very hard for me to enjoy programming in other languages. Most of my development work after that has been in Python, which is not only the least exciting language I've used in a very long time, but also lacks most of what I came to appreciate about Erlang. Erlang's constraints (primarily immutability in this context) makes it so much easier to reason about and troubleshoot code. It's also a good language for helping get opportunities to talk at conferences. People keep hearing about it without knowing much about it, so those talks tend to be well-attended. Elixir is a perfectly acceptable language, although the syntax and other design choices turn me off, personally. Erlang is a very concise language and helps me think in Erlang; anything that looks like Python/Ruby/C/Java/etc just feels wrong now.

by cnasc 8y ago

mlevental 8y ago

nice books

Lowkeyloki 8y ago

I loved the first one. It's one of my all-time favorite technical books. I was really disappointed by the second, though. I'd recommend skipping it. The second lacked the cohesion of the first probably owing to the fact that it wasn't written by the same author as the first. And each chapter was written by a different author.

300bps 8y ago

I learned programming from books like The Waite Group's Turbo-C Bible around 1989. In trying to teach my oldest son programming through using modern books, it seemed much more difficult. IDEs and languages change so rapidly that books (and even online tutorials) are dated quickly. Menu options change, links stop working, etc. It made my son more frustrated when he was first starting.

macintux 8y ago

The first book led me to discover Erlang, which literally changed my life. Great resource.

byebyetech 8y ago
Could you please elaborate on how it changed your life? I am interested in learning Elixir and wondering if you can give some words of encouragement, assuming it changed your life positively :)
- macintux 7y ago
  Falling in love with Erlang led me to create a Twitter account to share information about it, which helped me find and land a job with Basho, which was by far my favorite job, even if the company ended badly. So, that part is difficult to replicate. Setting that aside, Erlang finally helped me understand what functional programming is about (I'd tried and failed to grasp Lisp on a few occasions), taught me the value of immutability and asynchronous message passing, really opened my eyes to the fact that there's a vast world outside the tired Algol family tree. Sadly, pattern matching and immutability have made it very hard for me to enjoy programming in other languages. Most of my development work after that has been in Python, which is not only the least exciting language I've used in a very long time, but also lacks most of what I came to appreciate about Erlang. Erlang's constraints (primarily immutability in this context) makes it so much easier to reason about and troubleshoot code. It's also a good language for helping get opportunities to talk at conferences. People keep hearing about it without knowing much about it, so those talks tend to be well-attended. Elixir is a perfectly acceptable language, although the syntax and other design choices turn me off, personally. Erlang is a very concise language and helps me think in Erlang; anything that looks like Python/Ruby/C/Java/etc just feels wrong now.