[sf-perl] [meeting] Pegex and Acmeism
Rich Morin
rdm at cfcl.com
Sun Oct 16 12:53:11 PDT 2011
At 12:16 PM -0700 10/16/11, Joseph Brenner wrote:
> That's one of the reasons that I think the "mental exercise"
> argument for learning another language is pretty weak. I'm
> someone who's more-or-less a "perl programmer", but I
> couldn't avoid using a half-dozen languages (of one sort or
> another) if I wanted to. And I could easily spend my life
> getting mental exercise by learning my way around new CPAN
> modules.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about
programming, is not worth knowing."
-- EPIGRAMS IN PROGRAMMING
http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html
From ACM's SIGPLAN publication, (September, 1982),
Article "Epigrams in Programming", by Alan J. Perlis
of Yale University.
Some of the languages I work with are very similar to each
other. JSON and YAML (at least, the parts I use) are close
enough to fit in the same mental pigeonhole. Ruby, Perl,
and JavaScript are also pretty close cousins, though the OO
implementations vary substantially.
However, I think there _is_ something to be learned from a
language that approaches things very differently than the
ones you already know. So, I've been working my way through
"Learn You a Haskell for Great Good"
http://learnyouahaskell.com/
It's very readable and approachable and has given me several
ideas that have found their way into my code (which is NOT
in Haskell).
-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841
Software system design, development, and documentation
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