3 ms·

Interestingly, though I am not a great Rust programmer, nor a great Elixir programmer (I have written programs in both languages). And, gotten a little ways thr

by xrd 3y ago

Interestingly, though I am not a great Rust programmer, nor a great Elixir programmer (I have written programs in both languages). And, gotten a little ways through the amazing Exercism (https://exercism.org/tracks/elixir https://exercism.org/tracks/elixir). What I loved about this writeup was the way I could review both by comparing two languages in which I have a moderate understanding. The comparison of imports was very engaging to my brain. I really feel like I could accelerate learning a new language if the tutorial was written by comparing that language to another language I already know. Partially I just think that would keep my interest. I'm never excited when I start learning a new language and read the description of how to import a module in that new language; my brain would say "doh, I'll review this when I actually start writing code, let me zone out here..." I feel like most language tutorials feel obligated to cover this minutiae and there is always a lot to review when you are writing a tutorial. People would probably get upset if you skipped that stuff, but for me as a reader, I really prefer this approach here.

jddj 3y ago
https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/ tries to do this with spoken languages
ljaothasdfs 3y ago
This is why a survey in programming languages is beneficial. You want a variety to fill in the gaps and this increases capacity to learn new ones but you are also easily able to identify short comings and foot guns where people who are siloed to a single language could never be aware of which leads to instances of NIH syndrome like we've seen in Python & Go.
drewbug01 3y ago
There was something like this a few years ago, "Elixir for Rubyists": https://thoughtbot.com/blog/elixir-for-rubyists https://thoughtbot.com/blog/elixir-for-rubyists
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  I wrote something similar here: https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-for-ruby-developers-the-three-most-important-differences https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-for-ruby-developers-t... https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-syntax-for-ruby-developers https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-syntax-for-ruby-devel...
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Disclaimer: This is my talk/video If you like the presentation format rather than written format, I did what was called by one reviewer "a delightfully thorough" intro to Elixir for Rubyists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPWMBDTPMkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPWMBDTPMkQ
- mike1o1 3y ago
  I'm not the author of the book, but I bought and enjoyed it quite a bit. https://pragprog.com/titles/sbelixir/from-ruby-to-elixir/ https://pragprog.com/titles/sbelixir/from-ruby-to-elixir/ From Ruby to Elixir, by Stephen Bussey. He's also written a book named Real-time Phoenix which I also found pretty helpful.
namaria 3y ago
You bring up something interesting. Structured learning is very helpful but I sometimes hate that I can't or feel I shouldn't skip around. Videos are the worst because it's very linear. I'd love to be able to see abstract concepts such as the interpreter/compiler for a language and it's syntax and important concepts and models etc the way you can just turn a 3d model around in a CAD system. That would be truly amazing. Let me explore it with my visual cortex, instead of of the need to follow along some story I'm not really interested in.
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  Edward Tufte advocates handouts over slides in presentations for just this reason. Your audience can refer back to the written and illustrated content of your presentation at their leisure.
killthebuddha 3y ago
FWIW this is the #1 best use case I've found for ChatGPT. I recently started learning golang and as an experiment decided to use nothing but ChatGPT for reference/documentation. So far, ChatGPT has satisfied roughly 100% of my questions. A lot of the questions were like "what's the go equivalent of X in JS/TS?". The returns seem to be diminishing after ~6 weeks, but the first 2-3 weeks were the least friction I've ever encountered learning basically any new topic. It was kind of wild, I don't remember getting stuck even a single time, it was just super high-density progress, non-stop. More generally, the situation where "I have a good amount of generic knowledge, so I know what I want, but I don't have the specific knowledge I need" seems to be a sweet spot for ChatGPT.

by xrd 3y ago

jddj 3y ago

https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/ tries to do this with spoken languages

ljaothasdfs 3y ago

This is why a survey in programming languages is beneficial. You want a variety to fill in the gaps and this increases capacity to learn new ones but you are also easily able to identify short comings and foot guns where people who are siloed to a single language could never be aware of which leads to instances of NIH syndrome like we've seen in Python & Go.

drewbug01 3y ago

There was something like this a few years ago, "Elixir for Rubyists": https://thoughtbot.com/blog/elixir-for-rubyists https://thoughtbot.com/blog/elixir-for-rubyists

arrowsmith 3y ago
I wrote something similar here: https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-for-ruby-developers-the-three-most-important-differences https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-for-ruby-developers-t... https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-syntax-for-ruby-developers https://phoenixonrails.com/blog/elixir-syntax-for-ruby-devel...
- freedomben 3y ago
  Disclaimer: This is my talk/video If you like the presentation format rather than written format, I did what was called by one reviewer "a delightfully thorough" intro to Elixir for Rubyists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPWMBDTPMkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPWMBDTPMkQ
mike1o1 3y ago
I'm not the author of the book, but I bought and enjoyed it quite a bit. https://pragprog.com/titles/sbelixir/from-ruby-to-elixir/ https://pragprog.com/titles/sbelixir/from-ruby-to-elixir/ From Ruby to Elixir, by Stephen Bussey. He's also written a book named Real-time Phoenix which I also found pretty helpful.

namaria 3y ago

You bring up something interesting. Structured learning is very helpful but I sometimes hate that I can't or feel I shouldn't skip around. Videos are the worst because it's very linear. I'd love to be able to see abstract concepts such as the interpreter/compiler for a language and it's syntax and important concepts and models etc the way you can just turn a 3d model around in a CAD system. That would be truly amazing. Let me explore it with my visual cortex, instead of of the need to follow along some story I'm not really interested in.

tomjakubowski 3y ago
Edward Tufte advocates handouts over slides in presentations for just this reason. Your audience can refer back to the written and illustrated content of your presentation at their leisure.

killthebuddha 3y ago

FWIW this is the #1 best use case I've found for ChatGPT. I recently started learning golang and as an experiment decided to use nothing but ChatGPT for reference/documentation. So far, ChatGPT has satisfied roughly 100% of my questions. A lot of the questions were like "what's the go equivalent of X in JS/TS?". The returns seem to be diminishing after ~6 weeks, but the first 2-3 weeks were the least friction I've ever encountered learning basically any new topic. It was kind of wild, I don't remember getting stuck even a single time, it was just super high-density progress, non-stop. More generally, the situation where "I have a good amount of generic knowledge, so I know what I want, but I don't have the specific knowledge I need" seems to be a sweet spot for ChatGPT.