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> most programmers write code as in the language they first really used, regardless of the language they're actually using I doubt that this is true. I can't q
by Miky 16y ago
> most programmers write code as in the language they first really used, regardless of the language they're actually using
I doubt that this is true. I can't quite remember, but I'm pretty sure the first language I ever used was Color Basic. I've forgotten quite a bit of it, and it has pretty much no influence on my programming.
The first real programming I did was with structured imperative languages (Game Maker was the first thing I used for anything real). The code I wrote bore almost no resemblance to Color Basic, and while I was using these languages, solutions to problems using the tools of structured imperative programming came to mind much more readily than solutions using the style of unstructured Basic.
Later, I learned Haskell and functional programming. For the first while, everything I wrote was like a puzzle. I had to think for a long time to do things the functional way. But after having used it enough, while I'm in Haskell, functional solutions come just as readily as imperative solutions come while I'm in those languages, perhaps even more.
Of course, people who are experienced with one language and inexperienced in another will try to apply the idioms from the first language in the second whether they're applicable or not, but programmers do not always write code as in the first language they really used.
- jfb 16y agoI may have not made myself clear; I think it is largely true that programmers start writing COBOL in language x; some rapidly progress, others don't. It's the latter group that are red flags to me — it signals a lack of intellectual curiosity. Again, it's not dispositive or anything; sometimes programmers, particularly younger ones, just haven't seen the strengths of the idiom in their alternate languages.