Elysian Shadows

GyroVorbis wrote: It's not about which languages you "know." (What do you do, go around memorizing the syntax for as many languages as you can?)

In my terms knowing a programing language is being able to fluently write in it and to be able to look at code and understand what it does most of the time.

Bl@ck Ph@ntom wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote: It's not about which languages you "know." (What do you do, go around memorizing the syntax for as many languages as you can?)

In my terms knowing a programing language is being able to fluently write in it and to be able to look at code and understand what it does most of the time.

But isent that just remembering the syntax(and the API being used)? Atleast if you know the paradigm, which in most cases will be procedural or object oriented, maybe functional.

ismetteren wrote:

Bl@ck Ph@ntom wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote: It's not about which languages you "know." (What do you do, go around memorizing the syntax for as many languages as you can?)

In my terms knowing a programing language is being able to fluently write in it and to be able to look at code and understand what it does most of the time.

But isent that just remembering the syntax(and the API being used)? Atleast if you know the paradigm, which in most cases will be procedural or object oriented, maybe functional.

No matter what you do in a language you a still remember or looking up syntax no matter if your just starting a language or a master at it.

if you have done this long enough you will know that "knowing" a language is faaaaarr less important than "knowing" programming.
language fades to oblivion and you see the ideas. yeah it does not hurt to know the specific syntax of a particular language, but id rather understand a programming concept, than know 10 languages perfectly.

Once you really "master" the concept of programming you can learn any language in a short amount of time.
All programming is relatively the same, some having even the same syntax like all of the C based or C like languages.

If you know how to look up information you really know every language there is provided you learn the syntax and how it's structured then just look up function and method calls for things you want to do when you program.

So the point of this post is basically is saying... "what GyroVorbis said".

GyroVorbis wrote:This question means nothing.

It's not about which languages you "know." (What do you do, go around memorizing the syntax for as many languages as you can?)

Once you become a competent programmer, you should be able to pick up a new language in anywhere from a day to a week to suit your current needs. So "knowing" a bunch of syntaxes really means absolutely nothing in this business.

Depends on what you mean by "competent programmer." I agree that knowing the syntax isn't the important part, but just because you're competent doesn't mean there aren't plenty of programming concepts to learn. The list of languages you know is a good indicator of which programming concepts you know. For example, "picking up" Haskell isn't exactly trivial. Learning Haskell will fundamentally change the way you think about programming. Same goes for Lisp (and if you already know Scheme, learning Common Lisp will still change the way you think about programming by allowing full programmatic macros, vs the hygienic macros in Scheme).
Learning Erlang will change the way you think about programming.
Learning Prolog will change the way you think about programming.
(Of course, this is assuming the languages you know are imperative)

So you're right that just memorizing syntax is pointless, but that doesn't mean that just because you consider yourself a "competent programmer" you won't gain anything from learning new languages.

language fades to oblivion and you see the ideas.

See PL/1. All but dead, however was first language to use pointers (amongst other things).

This is all that an expert programmer would need to pickup a language;
*An example program or two. OR A listing of it's syntax.
This is what a good programmer would want to/should know about a language they were picking up;
*The languages feature set.
*The languages design philosophy.

If you do the first without acknowledging the second you can probably make anything you want. However you would be able to do it a lot better if you did the second.

i will say that mr. wtetzner has some good points about languages like lisp, erl and prolog, they certainly are very very different. but i will submit that they are far and few.

lisp just makes me cringggge, not that its a bad lang or anything, just that i have dreams of hordes of parenthesis that haunt me.

prolog is probably the strangest one of the bunch, has some very peculiar rules.

oh and haskall, yes, that is a beast. its a beaut for math based problems.

avansc wrote:if you have done this long enough you will know that "knowing" a language is faaaaarr less important than "knowing" programming.
language fades to oblivion and you see the ideas. yeah it does not hurt to know the specific syntax of a particular language, but id rather understand a programming concept, than know 10 languages perfectly.

Agreed. There are also two aspects you can look at for knowing a language. One is how to use the language "legally" and the other is how to use it "morally". The legal aspect is just everything that is syntatically correct in a language and can be compiled (if it's a compiled language). Basic programming books and tutorials cover this part, and tell you how to set out your code. The moral aspect is how to use a language without leading to pitfalls that cause bugs or crashes. This includes topics like when and how to properly use pointers or smart pointers, following coding standards and proper exception handling. These sort of things will become bigger challenges as you develop your skills.

wtetzner wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote:This question means nothing.

It's not about which languages you "know." (What do you do, go around memorizing the syntax for as many languages as you can?)

Once you become a competent programmer, you should be able to pick up a new language in anywhere from a day to a week to suit your current needs. So "knowing" a bunch of syntaxes really means absolutely nothing in this business.

Depends on what you mean by "competent programmer." I agree that knowing the syntax isn't the important part, but just because you're competent doesn't mean there aren't plenty of programming concepts to learn. The list of languages you know is a good indicator of which programming concepts you know. For example, "picking up" Haskell isn't exactly trivial. Learning Haskell will fundamentally change the way you think about programming. Same goes for Lisp (and if you already know Scheme, learning Common Lisp will still change the way you think about programming by allowing full programmatic macros, vs the hygienic macros in Scheme).
Learning Erlang will change the way you think about programming.
Learning Prolog will change the way you think about programming.
(Of course, this is assuming the languages you know are imperative)

So you're right that just memorizing syntax is pointless, but that doesn't mean that just because you consider yourself a "competent programmer" you won't gain anything from learning new languages.

Yeah, this is definitely true. I was just trying to make a point that a bunch of kids going:

1) Javascript
2) PHP
3) Perl
4) Python
5) Ruby
6) Lua

isn't going to say a whole lot. These languages are all procedural with optional object-orientation. Seriously, it's a matter of googling some docs or picking up a decent book for a day to learn them.

But yeah, definitely something with a completely different paradigm or level of abstraction (jumping from C++ to assembly, C++ to C#, etc) is going to be a much larger deal than going down a list of scripting languages that we can all hack together a hello world in.

This is so true. I'm sick of seeing "how many languages do you know", "X vs Y language", or my favorite "which programming language should I learn?". Most of the time, it ends in a flamewar between languages.

I do have to disagree with some points here though. I do not believe that a competent programmer can just pick up any language. Sure a competent C++ programmer can pick up any other procedural/OO statically typed langauge with ease. But, like Gyro said, I seriously doubt that a C++ programmer can just learn the syntax of Lisp (which is a bit ironic, as Lisp has no syntax.. that's why the parens are there ) and be competent in it. You will have to remove your mindset from the procedural world and experience something completely new. The same applies the other way around.

This is also why you see so many haters on youtube and other forums. They talk about what they "know" but have nothing to show for it. I have immense respect for GyroVorbis, because he builds stuff. That's what real engineers do. I too was in the trap of "Oh.. I'm gonna learn so many languages and be an awesome programmer" but then realized that it doesn't really matter. I would like to see more threads that sound like, "What have you built?" or "Check out what I've built", something completely language agnostic.

In the end, noone will ask you what language you made this nice program in. Not even which libraries you've used.

Ok well I think that this topic has been beaten to death, will someone please close it or move it the "what not to post form".