When I started programming it was ZX Spectrum BASIC. No abstractions other than some symbols. Then I moved on to Perl, then PHP and eventually C# - all increasi

When I started programming it was ZX Spectrum BASIC. No abstractions other than some symbols. Then I moved on to Perl, then PHP and eventually C# - all increasing abstraction from the hardware, but all mutable state and based off how hardware works. Recently I've started moving on to F# and Haskell, and it's really opened my eyes. While computers keep getting faster the humans who input the programs do not. While programming is about getting a computer to do things the most important part is making it do what you want it to to. Anything that helps humans reason about what the computer will do - rather than exactly how - is a good thing in my book.