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Same here. Reading the article, I could not really relate to the experience of being a single-language developer for 10 years. In my early days, I identified

Same here. Reading the article, I could not really relate to the experience of being a single-language developer for 10 years. In my early days, I identified strongly with my chosen programming language, but people way more experienced than me taught me that a programming language is a tool, and that this approach is akin to saying "well, I don't know about those pliers, I am a hammerer." My personal feeling from working across a wide range of programming languages is that it expands your horizons in a massive way (and hard to qualitatively describe), and I'm happy that I did this.

mathgeek 1y ago
Good analogy IMHO. Knowing whether a given language is a tool vs a toolbox is important.
ryandv 1y ago
The idiosyncrasies of Ruby, like Perl and JavaScript, lead to a certain kind of brain damage that make it difficult to build correct mental models of computing that can then generalize to other languages.
- pryelluw 1y ago
  Although I disagree with your opinion (and who cares?), your comment reminded me of Winp Lo. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY
  - ryandv 1y ago
    This is profoundly racist.
    - pryelluw 1y ago
      Thank you, but I wasn’t going for racist. What you may have missed, from the perspective of your vertically scaled horse, is that you compare learning certain models to a mental disability. It makes calling my comment racist similar to the whole pot/kettle thing. However, I do appreciate reading about such opinions because it offers a peek into the elitism that surrounds programming languages. Also, as a person from a non-traditional and non-privileged background, Im a little unsure about how to proceed. Shall we cut our losses and move on?
      - skvmb 1y ago
        > Thank you LMAOOOOO I love the response, it's similar to "Thanks for noticing" B A S E D
    - taskforcegemini 1y ago
      how is that video racist? calling it racist appears to be much more racist
- nazgulsenpai 1y ago
  From my own personal experience I'd add Visual Basic to that list.
  - thegeomaster 1y ago
    I never understood the hate. Beyond the stranger syntax, it's not terribly different from a language such as Pascal. It's an old imperative language without too much magic (beyond strange syntax sugar).
  - hattmall 1y ago
    Terrible language, excellent tools.
- WatermelonApe 1y ago
  [dead]
- jonhohle 1y ago
  Unless you’re writing instructions for a Turing machine the impedance mismatch between the real world and “computing” is always going to have idiosyncrasies. You don’t have to like a language to understand its design goals and trade offs. There are some very popular languages with constraints or designs that I feel are absurd, redundant, or counterproductive but I cannot think of a (mainstream) language where I haven’t seen someone much smarter than me do amazing things. The language I consider the lamest, biggest impediment to learning computer science is used by some of the smartest people on the planet to build amazing things.

mathgeek 1y ago

Good analogy IMHO. Knowing whether a given language is a tool vs a toolbox is important.

ryandv 1y ago

The idiosyncrasies of Ruby, like Perl and JavaScript, lead to a certain kind of brain damage that make it difficult to build correct mental models of computing that can then generalize to other languages.

pryelluw 1y ago
Although I disagree with your opinion (and who cares?), your comment reminded me of Winp Lo. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY
- ryandv 1y ago
  This is profoundly racist.
  - pryelluw 1y ago
    Thank you, but I wasn’t going for racist. What you may have missed, from the perspective of your vertically scaled horse, is that you compare learning certain models to a mental disability. It makes calling my comment racist similar to the whole pot/kettle thing. However, I do appreciate reading about such opinions because it offers a peek into the elitism that surrounds programming languages. Also, as a person from a non-traditional and non-privileged background, Im a little unsure about how to proceed. Shall we cut our losses and move on?
    - skvmb 1y ago
      > Thank you LMAOOOOO I love the response, it's similar to "Thanks for noticing" B A S E D
  - taskforcegemini 1y ago
    how is that video racist? calling it racist appears to be much more racist
nazgulsenpai 1y ago
From my own personal experience I'd add Visual Basic to that list.
- thegeomaster 1y ago
  I never understood the hate. Beyond the stranger syntax, it's not terribly different from a language such as Pascal. It's an old imperative language without too much magic (beyond strange syntax sugar).
- hattmall 1y ago
  Terrible language, excellent tools.
WatermelonApe 1y ago
[dead]
jonhohle 1y ago
Unless you’re writing instructions for a Turing machine the impedance mismatch between the real world and “computing” is always going to have idiosyncrasies. You don’t have to like a language to understand its design goals and trade offs. There are some very popular languages with constraints or designs that I feel are absurd, redundant, or counterproductive but I cannot think of a (mainstream) language where I haven’t seen someone much smarter than me do amazing things. The language I consider the lamest, biggest impediment to learning computer science is used by some of the smartest people on the planet to build amazing things.