3 ms·

No FORTH, APL, Clojure or Rust? My HN bingo card is empty...

tuukkah 4y ago
Well, Common Lisp and Erlang there made up for it. Clojure and Rust were on their list of strong languages that they didn't end up needing: > F#, Ocaml, Rust, Perl, Swift, Clojure, Smalltalk Forth and APL were on the list of probably impractical languages: > APL / J, Prolog, Forth, m4, COBOL, Fortran, Ada
LeFantome 4y ago
I can see skipping APL. Also, Rust could be frustrating if you only had a day. It like saying you are going to learn a new sport every day and skipping snowboarding because while you can always kick or throw a ball badly, just standing up and falling down continuously for a day does not actually teach you anything about snowboarding. Forth would be a good one though. Both simple and different.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  It's likely that the professor knows some Rust already. In which case Rust is a powerful tool to bring to AoC late on because you can afford to take a not-so-algorithmically clever approach and Rust's optimiser will save you. Take day 16. The professor did it in Python, with which they have some experience. My Part II solution is pretty bad, it's a combinatorial explosion resulting from a search of the solution space with both the elephant and myself trying every option. But, I wrote it in Rust, so this bad solution finishes in five minutes. If I'd written this terrible solution in Python it may have taken hours to finish...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
linhns 4y ago
Both Clojure and Rust are not very fast to learn to the problem-solving level. Other languages like Java or C++ can substitute for them. APL probably too hard to learn in 1-day
- abrudz 4y ago
  I'm convinced a moderately intelligent person with good grasp of high school mathematics can learn the entire core of APL in 24 hours of study (which of course is more than 1 day) with appropriate tutoring. Lack of programming experience is a plus. Yes, I'm willing to tutor a student to test my claim.
  - FelipeCortez 4y ago
    I volunteer
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
drivers99 4y ago
I got my 50 stars in Python, but I also did the first two days in Forth because I've been wanting to learn it. Regarding another thread there talking about whether the language affects the implementation, it did for me. For day 1, I ended up using a pretty different method than the Python code, mostly so I could use what I already knew or could quickly figure out, processing it character by character. I wasn't planning to do more, but I realize the input for day 2 could be executed as Forth code simply by defining the words for what those input command should do, and then executing the input AS Forth, so it was actually a quick and easy one in Forth.
cultofmetatron 4y ago
rust is def not a language you can pick up in a day. It took me a week from a cold start to get a working mergesort toy example working. By comparison, elixir took me 1.5 hours. 2 to make it multicore.
fulafel 4y ago
Too mainstream - Clojure and Rust were mentioned in their "reserve" of familiar workhorse languages if a problem turned out to be too hard.

Well, Common Lisp and Erlang there made up for it. Clojure and Rust were on their list of strong languages that they didn't end up needing: > F#, Ocaml, Rust, Perl, Swift, Clojure, Smalltalk Forth and APL were on the list of probably impractical languages: > APL / J, Prolog, Forth, m4, COBOL, Fortran, Ada

LeFantome 4y ago

I can see skipping APL. Also, Rust could be frustrating if you only had a day. It like saying you are going to learn a new sport every day and skipping snowboarding because while you can always kick or throw a ball badly, just standing up and falling down continuously for a day does not actually teach you anything about snowboarding. Forth would be a good one though. Both simple and different.

tialaramex 4y ago
It's likely that the professor knows some Rust already. In which case Rust is a powerful tool to bring to AoC late on because you can afford to take a not-so-algorithmically clever approach and Rust's optimiser will save you. Take day 16. The professor did it in Python, with which they have some experience. My Part II solution is pretty bad, it's a combinatorial explosion resulting from a search of the solution space with both the elephant and myself trying every option. But, I wrote it in Rust, so this bad solution finishes in five minutes. If I'd written this terrible solution in Python it may have taken hours to finish...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

linhns 4y ago

Both Clojure and Rust are not very fast to learn to the problem-solving level. Other languages like Java or C++ can substitute for them. APL probably too hard to learn in 1-day

abrudz 4y ago
I'm convinced a moderately intelligent person with good grasp of high school mathematics can learn the entire core of APL in 24 hours of study (which of course is more than 1 day) with appropriate tutoring. Lack of programming experience is a plus. Yes, I'm willing to tutor a student to test my claim.
- FelipeCortez 4y ago
  I volunteer
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

drivers99 4y ago

I got my 50 stars in Python, but I also did the first two days in Forth because I've been wanting to learn it. Regarding another thread there talking about whether the language affects the implementation, it did for me. For day 1, I ended up using a pretty different method than the Python code, mostly so I could use what I already knew or could quickly figure out, processing it character by character. I wasn't planning to do more, but I realize the input for day 2 could be executed as Forth code simply by defining the words for what those input command should do, and then executing the input AS Forth, so it was actually a quick and easy one in Forth.

cultofmetatron 4y ago

rust is def not a language you can pick up in a day. It took me a week from a cold start to get a working mergesort toy example working. By comparison, elixir took me 1.5 hours. 2 to make it multicore.

fulafel 4y ago

Too mainstream - Clojure and Rust were mentioned in their "reserve" of familiar workhorse languages if a problem turned out to be too hard.