Re: [SLE] OT:advise on programming language
I'm not sure! I've seen people who has started with procedural and OO languages instead of functional ones, and they are mostly uncapable of solving a simple functional problem, p.ex, a small counter! I don't think you'll need a Maths degree before you could do an (+ 2 3)...
Well, perhaps my view is tainted. I used to work with a guy (who had a maths background) who raved on and on about functional programming and how it was going to solve the world's problems. I never could work it out and I've been programming 15 years or more. Once, though, he explained a Haskel program which solved the 8-Queens chessboard problem and it sort of clicked with me. I could see what he was getting at when confronted by that problem and used functional programming to express a mathematical solution. But for beginners? No. It's too specialised, at least in my opinion.
PHP or Python I think are good starting languages. I think LISP would make a fantastic embeded web scripting language but have yet to see any implementation for server side web scripting that could match Perl, Python, and PHP. I once wrote a web-oriented lisp implementation called wisp but I got bored way before I found any really good uses for it. :) I think the type of programming a programmer uses should match not only the types of problems they are trying to solve but also how they think about problems. A really good programmer can work well with many types of languages because they can see problems from many angles at the same time. :) *^*^*^* Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you. -- Albert Einstein On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Derek Fountain wrote:
I'm not sure! I've seen people who has started with procedural and OO languages instead of functional ones, and they are mostly uncapable of solving a simple functional problem, p.ex, a small counter! I don't think you'll need a Maths degree before you could do an (+ 2 3)...
Well, perhaps my view is tainted. I used to work with a guy (who had a maths background) who raved on and on about functional programming and how it was going to solve the world's problems. I never could work it out and I've been programming 15 years or more.
Once, though, he explained a Haskel program which solved the 8-Queens chessboard problem and it sort of clicked with me. I could see what he was getting at when confronted by that problem and used functional programming to express a mathematical solution.
But for beginners? No. It's too specialised, at least in my opinion.
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participants (2)
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Derek Fountain
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Michael