5 ms·

Learning 12 new programming languages in 12 months

31 points by coderholic 16y ago

jschuur 16y ago
Why not learn one or two really well in that time instead?
- samdk 16y ago
  I think it's just important to know a little about a wide variety of things as it is to know a lot about a few specific things. Breadth and depth are both valuable. I ended up doing something similar to what this author tried to do starting in my sophomore year in college (although I didn't have any particular goal in mind when I started). Over the course of about a year and a half, through some combination of classes and my own projects, I programmed Standard ML, Prolog, Haskell, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, x86 Assembly, Scala, SuperCollider, and Scheme for the first time. At that point, all I really knew were Java and Python. I think it was an immensely useful experience for several reasons. I've now had some exposure to most/all of the major programming paradigms (and some less common ones too). A month is enough time to begin to get a feel for a language and its idioms, and being able to think and solve problems in different ways will make you a much better programmer even if you do end up working mostly in one or two languages. Learning how to learn a programming language quickly is also an exceptionally useful skill. New languages don't scare me any more--I can usually learn enough to start hacking on something in a couple of hours, and enough to not be writing completely horrible code in a couple of days. And it's now very rare that I sit down to read a piece of code and can't figure out what's happening because I'm not familiar with the language, which is very helpful when I need to work on something I've never seen before. That all said, there's a reason I didn't continue doing that indefinitely. Learning one or two languages really well is also very important.
- sharkbot 16y ago
  I don't disagree with your premise, but there can be utility to trying out a number of different languages quickly and see which approaches resonate with you. A month with a language won't give in-depth knowledge of a languages' strengths and weaknesses, but it will allow one to move past the superficial differences (syntax, originally intended problem domains) and on to the philosophical ideas behind the language. Trying Prolog, Erlang, Haskell and Scala in the space of 4 months while trying to solve simple problems (Project Euler comes to mind) should allow one to find a language approach that works. Object-oriented, lazy functional, concurrent or logical, one of those might stick. And if not, there's Lua, Ruby, Groovy, C#, Scheme, Perl6, Python3, Forth, C++, Brainfuck, ... Each language has a core idea or two that could fit someone's personality. Then, the next year could be spent learning that language in-depth, as you mention. Finally, build upon that experience and re-evaluate the orignal list of languages; JavaScript looks better after Lua, Haskell is Scheme with Prolog-like pattern matching and a generic type system like an advanced C++, Forth and Brainfuck are about a simplicity even beyond Scheme's, etc.
benologist 16y ago
What a great idea, amazing you managed to fit 4 of them in juggling everything else, very jealous of you.
melling 16y ago
It would be easier to learn a new language if I could fit it into my day job. My current idea is to try to find small throw-away tasks to do in different languages. For example, last week I joined StackOverFlow and tried to solve a small task by asking the same question for two different languages (elisp, Haskell). Elisp: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640040/how-can-i-generate-sql-inserts-from-pipe-delimited-data http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640040/how-can-i-generat... Haskell: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640953/how-can-i-generate-sql-inserts-from-pipe-delimited-data http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640953/how-can-i-generat... In the future, when I need something done quickly I won't always "reach" for Perl because I'll have a better starting point. Not that there's anything wrong with Perl. I just want a few more tools in my arsenal. If I few people joined in, we might end up with a few breadcrumbs to make it easier for everyone to get started.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
cd34 16y ago
Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KmnKhb-_kUoJ:www.coderholic.com/+http://www.coderholic.com/12-months-are-up/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KmnKhb-...
junkbit 16y ago
There's a great book called Seven Languages in Seven Weeks that teaches this way of thinking to broaden your horizons. The languages discussed are Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, and Haskell http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-w...
- cema 16y ago
  I am not sure how great it is. My impression was it skips and jumps around the language territory. For example, as I looked through the Clojure chapter, I knew I would not understand the language if I had not had studied it before.
  - bendmorris 16y ago
    I found the book very useful. The idea isn't to give you a deep understanding of the language, it's more along the lines of: introduce some cool concepts that you may not have seen before, and encourage you to do your own thing to learn the language. It also gives a quick introduction with examples to several different programming paradigms that many are unfamiliar with. The Haskell part is not particularly deep either, but it gives you some basics and gets you started.
  - sanderjd 16y ago
    I really loved the book, but I do think the title is misleading - for me, it was really "familiarize yourself with the concepts of seven languages in two or three weeks". It's clearly a marketing title, which is a bit off-putting, but a great introduction to the included languages.
- steven_h 16y ago
  I am actually using this book right now as the textbook for my programming languages course, so far it has been fun but I tend to like the pragprog books.
- PatrickTulskie 16y ago
  It is a pretty great book. It moves fast and does require some extra study but it's well worth it. I like learning things on my own and the daily "homework" is great.
malkia 16y ago
Sorry, but had to be posted: Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years", linked under... ahem http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html
- azanar 16y ago
  I understand the point you are trying to make in posting this, and it is a good point to make. However, in the article, Norvig himself points out the worthiness of learning several languages, and doesn't claim that you have to get on a ten year treadmill for any individual one, or even a subset. My impression was that Norvig was really targeting the people for whom whatever-language-in-a-fortnight-and-a-half would be their first exposure to programming at all. As you gain more languages, provided you are judicious in choosing, so shall your learning of each of those languages be more rapid than the prior. Does a month per language seem a bit rapid? Yeah, it kind of does, depending on the time spent in study and tooling. The pragmatic programmer guys suggest learning a new language every year; that seems wholly attainable. In reality, the author studied a language to what he considered a sufficient level in a quarter. That also doesn't seem that unreasonable, depending on the level of mastery desired. Could be that both perspectives have more than a grain of truth.
  - malkia 16y ago
    I like to learn new languages, but I end up at this. What matters more professionally is Frameworks, SDKs, Libraries, etc. For example I'm not a big fan of C#, or static typing, but Unity's C# (And UnityScript/BooLang) framework is pretty good to be ignored.
    - lelele 16y ago
      > What matters more professionally is Frameworks, SDKs, Libraries, etc. It depends. Frameworks and SDKs cannot overcome shortcomings of your language and/or language implementation (and often you don't have the luxury to switch gears, because there is only one reference implementation). When I studied Erlang's support for concurrency, I realized how hard it would have been trying to do that in another language. Yes, you could somewhat manage to replicate that, but: - your language implementation could lack microthreads, thus impacting how concurrency would scale; - you may need to follow some protocol in using the framework, otherwise you could fall into one of many pitfalls, which aren't there in the language you're using as a model.
ajays 16y ago
The problem with knowing too many languages is that soon the syntax starts blending with each other, and context switches take time.
- malkia 16y ago
  Actually it helped me realize certain things in other libs. For example using std::<pair> more after spending time with Common Lisp. Also it made me realized that certain building blocks, patterns, etc. are not that great when looked through a different view. For example the "factory" pattern is needed in C++, because objects can be allocated on the stack... Wait... what? Well, because C++ allows allocation of objects on the stack, obviously one cannot think in it, as if "new" would've returned object with different size than the one declared. e.g. "new SomeClass()" is known by the compiler how much space would take, hence "SomeClass someObject;" is known in advance and can be allocated on the stack. Cool, isn't.... Actually not so cool - because of that you can't return proxied objects, hidden implementation, etc... Hence you need factory - instead of "new SomeClass" -> CreateSomeClass() function that might return object of different size... Where I got aware of this - by spending some time with Objective C and it's objects. Then comes the holly OOP, especially the C++ way - but then one discovers lua, javascript... Or Common Lisp... and understands - "protected", "private" are not that important, and the GOF patterns are not that needed. Okay, so you go back at your work to code in C++, and just take it easier, because you have realized there is no point going hard-core and doing it the C++ way all the time. Hell it's even okay to have this macro called "HASHED( "SomeGameResource", 0x123123 )" that... gets preprocessed by external tool, that replaces 0x123123 with the hash code of "SomeGameResource" and puts it back in the source code. #ifdef DEBUG #define HASHED(s,c) hashed(s) // e.g. call function in debug to return the hash-code #else #define HASHED(s,c) c // replaced with the precalculated value #endif Now try doing that with templates.... But my point is - there is no need - just use an external tool that does it for you. Inform your programmers that if they want to change HASHED("BlahBlah", 0x123123) to HASHED("BlahBlah2", 0x123123) then they have to run it through a tool (or have such step), or just make them use the debug version. Or change the language... Joke! You are doing this for the Nintendo DS - "C/C++" is the only viable option for large project.
iwhine 16y ago
I'm sorry, but who cares? This post offered nothing insightful, merely click bait towards some of your projects. Teach me the benefit of learning "12 languages" or offer some productivity hacks to achieve so next time.
kleiba 16y ago
Articles like this always remind me of an old blog post by Steve Yegge, or rather a few paragraphs from it about Dan Friedman: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/rhinos-and-tigers.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/rhinos-and-tigers.ht... (the part I mean starts half-way through the article, search for "Friedman")
coderholic 16y ago
Sorry, posted before going to bed, and it looks like you killed my small VM! The site is back up now. Thanks for all of the comments!

31 points by coderholic 16y ago

jschuur 16y ago

Why not learn one or two really well in that time instead?

samdk 16y ago
I think it's just important to know a little about a wide variety of things as it is to know a lot about a few specific things. Breadth and depth are both valuable. I ended up doing something similar to what this author tried to do starting in my sophomore year in college (although I didn't have any particular goal in mind when I started). Over the course of about a year and a half, through some combination of classes and my own projects, I programmed Standard ML, Prolog, Haskell, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, x86 Assembly, Scala, SuperCollider, and Scheme for the first time. At that point, all I really knew were Java and Python. I think it was an immensely useful experience for several reasons. I've now had some exposure to most/all of the major programming paradigms (and some less common ones too). A month is enough time to begin to get a feel for a language and its idioms, and being able to think and solve problems in different ways will make you a much better programmer even if you do end up working mostly in one or two languages. Learning how to learn a programming language quickly is also an exceptionally useful skill. New languages don't scare me any more--I can usually learn enough to start hacking on something in a couple of hours, and enough to not be writing completely horrible code in a couple of days. And it's now very rare that I sit down to read a piece of code and can't figure out what's happening because I'm not familiar with the language, which is very helpful when I need to work on something I've never seen before. That all said, there's a reason I didn't continue doing that indefinitely. Learning one or two languages really well is also very important.
sharkbot 16y ago
I don't disagree with your premise, but there can be utility to trying out a number of different languages quickly and see which approaches resonate with you. A month with a language won't give in-depth knowledge of a languages' strengths and weaknesses, but it will allow one to move past the superficial differences (syntax, originally intended problem domains) and on to the philosophical ideas behind the language. Trying Prolog, Erlang, Haskell and Scala in the space of 4 months while trying to solve simple problems (Project Euler comes to mind) should allow one to find a language approach that works. Object-oriented, lazy functional, concurrent or logical, one of those might stick. And if not, there's Lua, Ruby, Groovy, C#, Scheme, Perl6, Python3, Forth, C++, Brainfuck, ... Each language has a core idea or two that could fit someone's personality. Then, the next year could be spent learning that language in-depth, as you mention. Finally, build upon that experience and re-evaluate the orignal list of languages; JavaScript looks better after Lua, Haskell is Scheme with Prolog-like pattern matching and a generic type system like an advanced C++, Forth and Brainfuck are about a simplicity even beyond Scheme's, etc.

benologist 16y ago

What a great idea, amazing you managed to fit 4 of them in juggling everything else, very jealous of you.

melling 16y ago

It would be easier to learn a new language if I could fit it into my day job. My current idea is to try to find small throw-away tasks to do in different languages. For example, last week I joined StackOverFlow and tried to solve a small task by asking the same question for two different languages (elisp, Haskell). Elisp: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640040/how-can-i-generate-sql-inserts-from-pipe-delimited-data http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640040/how-can-i-generat... Haskell: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640953/how-can-i-generate-sql-inserts-from-pipe-delimited-data http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4640953/how-can-i-generat... In the future, when I need something done quickly I won't always "reach" for Perl because I'll have a better starting point. Not that there's anything wrong with Perl. I just want a few more tools in my arsenal. If I few people joined in, we might end up with a few breadcrumbs to make it easier for everyone to get started.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

cd34 16y ago

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KmnKhb-_kUoJ:www.coderholic.com/+http://www.coderholic.com/12-months-are-up/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KmnKhb-...

junkbit 16y ago

There's a great book called Seven Languages in Seven Weeks that teaches this way of thinking to broaden your horizons. The languages discussed are Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, and Haskell http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-w...

cema 16y ago
I am not sure how great it is. My impression was it skips and jumps around the language territory. For example, as I looked through the Clojure chapter, I knew I would not understand the language if I had not had studied it before.
- bendmorris 16y ago
  I found the book very useful. The idea isn't to give you a deep understanding of the language, it's more along the lines of: introduce some cool concepts that you may not have seen before, and encourage you to do your own thing to learn the language. It also gives a quick introduction with examples to several different programming paradigms that many are unfamiliar with. The Haskell part is not particularly deep either, but it gives you some basics and gets you started.
- sanderjd 16y ago
  I really loved the book, but I do think the title is misleading - for me, it was really "familiarize yourself with the concepts of seven languages in two or three weeks". It's clearly a marketing title, which is a bit off-putting, but a great introduction to the included languages.
steven_h 16y ago
I am actually using this book right now as the textbook for my programming languages course, so far it has been fun but I tend to like the pragprog books.
PatrickTulskie 16y ago
It is a pretty great book. It moves fast and does require some extra study but it's well worth it. I like learning things on my own and the daily "homework" is great.

malkia 16y ago

Sorry, but had to be posted: Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years", linked under... ahem http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html

azanar 16y ago
I understand the point you are trying to make in posting this, and it is a good point to make. However, in the article, Norvig himself points out the worthiness of learning several languages, and doesn't claim that you have to get on a ten year treadmill for any individual one, or even a subset. My impression was that Norvig was really targeting the people for whom whatever-language-in-a-fortnight-and-a-half would be their first exposure to programming at all. As you gain more languages, provided you are judicious in choosing, so shall your learning of each of those languages be more rapid than the prior. Does a month per language seem a bit rapid? Yeah, it kind of does, depending on the time spent in study and tooling. The pragmatic programmer guys suggest learning a new language every year; that seems wholly attainable. In reality, the author studied a language to what he considered a sufficient level in a quarter. That also doesn't seem that unreasonable, depending on the level of mastery desired. Could be that both perspectives have more than a grain of truth.
- malkia 16y ago
  I like to learn new languages, but I end up at this. What matters more professionally is Frameworks, SDKs, Libraries, etc. For example I'm not a big fan of C#, or static typing, but Unity's C# (And UnityScript/BooLang) framework is pretty good to be ignored.
  - lelele 16y ago
    > What matters more professionally is Frameworks, SDKs, Libraries, etc. It depends. Frameworks and SDKs cannot overcome shortcomings of your language and/or language implementation (and often you don't have the luxury to switch gears, because there is only one reference implementation). When I studied Erlang's support for concurrency, I realized how hard it would have been trying to do that in another language. Yes, you could somewhat manage to replicate that, but: - your language implementation could lack microthreads, thus impacting how concurrency would scale; - you may need to follow some protocol in using the framework, otherwise you could fall into one of many pitfalls, which aren't there in the language you're using as a model.

ajays 16y ago

The problem with knowing too many languages is that soon the syntax starts blending with each other, and context switches take time.

malkia 16y ago
Actually it helped me realize certain things in other libs. For example using std::<pair> more after spending time with Common Lisp. Also it made me realized that certain building blocks, patterns, etc. are not that great when looked through a different view. For example the "factory" pattern is needed in C++, because objects can be allocated on the stack... Wait... what? Well, because C++ allows allocation of objects on the stack, obviously one cannot think in it, as if "new" would've returned object with different size than the one declared. e.g. "new SomeClass()" is known by the compiler how much space would take, hence "SomeClass someObject;" is known in advance and can be allocated on the stack. Cool, isn't.... Actually not so cool - because of that you can't return proxied objects, hidden implementation, etc... Hence you need factory - instead of "new SomeClass" -> CreateSomeClass() function that might return object of different size... Where I got aware of this - by spending some time with Objective C and it's objects. Then comes the holly OOP, especially the C++ way - but then one discovers lua, javascript... Or Common Lisp... and understands - "protected", "private" are not that important, and the GOF patterns are not that needed. Okay, so you go back at your work to code in C++, and just take it easier, because you have realized there is no point going hard-core and doing it the C++ way all the time. Hell it's even okay to have this macro called "HASHED( "SomeGameResource", 0x123123 )" that... gets preprocessed by external tool, that replaces 0x123123 with the hash code of "SomeGameResource" and puts it back in the source code. #ifdef DEBUG #define HASHED(s,c) hashed(s) // e.g. call function in debug to return the hash-code #else #define HASHED(s,c) c // replaced with the precalculated value #endif Now try doing that with templates.... But my point is - there is no need - just use an external tool that does it for you. Inform your programmers that if they want to change HASHED("BlahBlah", 0x123123) to HASHED("BlahBlah2", 0x123123) then they have to run it through a tool (or have such step), or just make them use the debug version. Or change the language... Joke! You are doing this for the Nintendo DS - "C/C++" is the only viable option for large project.

iwhine 16y ago

I'm sorry, but who cares? This post offered nothing insightful, merely click bait towards some of your projects. Teach me the benefit of learning "12 languages" or offer some productivity hacks to achieve so next time.

kleiba 16y ago

Articles like this always remind me of an old blog post by Steve Yegge, or rather a few paragraphs from it about Dan Friedman: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/rhinos-and-tigers.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/rhinos-and-tigers.ht... (the part I mean starts half-way through the article, search for "Friedman")

coderholic 16y ago

Sorry, posted before going to bed, and it looks like you killed my small VM! The site is back up now. Thanks for all of the comments!