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Ask HN: Which programming language should a journeyman programmer learn?

6 pointsby blueslurpeeover 3 years ago
Hello HN,<p>I&#x27;m looking for some advice and&#x2F;or enthusiasm on which programming language you might recommend to a young journeyman programmer looking to broaden their horizons beyond the mainstream imperative stock.<p>As some background: Like many from the past decade, I was introduced to programming and cut my teeth via Python, and while it holds a soft spot in my heart for its lovely syntax and idioms (personal preference), I am growing weary of chasing down run-time errors in production and the squishyness of its type system (or lack thereof).<p>From there I&#x27;ve followed along the well-trodden path of imperative&#x2F;OO languages one would expect to become acquainted with during the &quot;standard&quot; CS education, namely C &amp; Java, along with some Golang thrown into the mix. I adore C for its close mental alignment to the computer&#x27;s operations, and while I appreciate Golang and Java and have no great qualms with either, they don&#x27;t scratch a certain itch.<p>My daily driver at work is Typescript. I find writing vanilla js to be generally objectionable.<p>I would classify myself as a competent journeyman, and I am really looking to branch out and broaden my perspectives. I&#x27;m not sure what itch it is I&#x27;m trying to scratch, but I&#x27;m looking for an enthusiastic community and a language that brings a lot of &quot;joy&quot;, if that makes sense. I&#x27;m not looking for any commercial benefit out of this, but hey, if being an expert in the lang is highly profitable, that&#x27;s also a data point.<p>A good type system might be where my interests are first piqued, but it&#x27;s not a hard requirement. Similarly, my mind jumps to Functional Programming, but purity is not a requirement either.<p>So, if you&#x27;re an experienced vet, found yourself in a similar situation beforehand, have been having similar inclinations, or are just a fanboy&#x2F;girl for your specific lang, please share your thoughts!<p>Should I be wrangling data functional-style sans types with Clojure?<p>Playing around with the BEAM with Elixir&#x2F;Erlang?<p>Diving into Scala types and the Akka framework?<p>Jump into the deep end with Haskell?<p>Try my hand at Rust and systems software?<p>Ocaml, a language I know nothing about?<p>I have formal CS training, so I&#x27;m not overly intimidated by the more &quot;academic&quot; languages.<p>Thanks a lot in advance!

12 comments

drKarlover 3 years ago
So, since you mentioned Java, Kotlin and Groovy are very pleasant to write and quite easy to learn, lots of syntactic sugar. I&#x27;d say Kotlin is a better language than Groovy. Scala is a very deep language to learn, lots of fascinating features, just reading Programming Scala is amazing and totally recommended. The learning curve is steeper to get to more advanced concepts but it is worth it. Rust is not as difficult to learn as Scala, not so many features and concepts but it&#x27;s a bit difficult to wrap your head around borrowing and lifetimes mostly, and some of the smart pointer stuff. I wouldn&#x27;t recommend lisp or derivatives like Closure etc mostly because of the parentheses. It is said the last 3 pages of the code that controlled the Soviet nuclear launch codes written in Lisp are just ending parentheses.<p>To scratch your itch of broadening your horizons and learn lots of amazing features that don&#x27;t exist in the languages you know (Python, JavaScript, Typescript), I recommend Scala
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laumarsover 3 years ago
Sounds like you’ve already done a fair amount of homework yourself. Threads like these are often just an excuse for people to preach their own personal preference so I think your should use your own experiences and future projects to guide you.<p>But if you’re really after a recommendation, then I’d suggest either go for a functional language (like a LISP, Scala, OCaml, etc) or a low level systems languages (like Zig or Rust). Or even one that overlaps with both domains?<p>It really does just depend on what you want to do next though. Nobody else can tell you that.
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jguzmanjrover 3 years ago
I’m a fan of Rust. Discovered it in mid 2020 and am loving every piece of it. It does have its warts (e.g. incomplete async story) but what language doesn’t? In particular I like its chatty compiler — lots of d’oh mistakes are caught while the code is still fresh in my mind for example. I also like reading blog posts about Rust; currently going through this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fasterthanli.me&#x2F;articles&#x2F;some-mistakes-rust-doesnt-catch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fasterthanli.me&#x2F;articles&#x2F;some-mistakes-rust-doesnt-c...</a>
georgia_peachover 3 years ago
Lisp&#x2F;Scheme are great brain-expanders. So is APL. For long-term maintenance, the more static typing the better, so I wouldn&#x27;t use them for anything big, but they&#x27;re great for one-off problem solving. Before anyone chimes in with &quot;<i>you can do that with macros</i>,&quot; patched-in and after-the-fact typing doesn&#x27;t count.<p>Go is a strange mix of functional and imperative that, despite its simplicity, is illuminating in its own way.<p>Getting to <i>really</i> know the shell and regex, inside and out, can also be a revelation.
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gorjusborgover 3 years ago
I would recommend a lisp (scheme is beautiful) if you&#x27;re looking to see things a different way, and grow. I found its depth of history and its elegant simplicity inspiring.<p>If you want types, I&#x27;d check out Haskell, or OCaml or F#.<p>So I guess what my advice is decide how you want to grow and choose a language at that extreme.<p>If you&#x27;ve learned a mainstream <i>get it done</i> language you wont get much out of learning another one.
jim-jim-jimover 3 years ago
Haskell is the &quot;deep end&quot; in terms of its ideology, but not difficulty. In practice, I&#x27;ve found compromise languages like Typescript and Scala more challenging because they&#x27;re everything to everybody. If you already enjoy the benefits of types and want to explore that avenue further, then Haskell makes more sense than some of the alternatives.
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eternalbanover 3 years ago
(You should prepend &quot;Ask HN:&quot; to your post&#x27;s title.)<p>This almost sounds like language as an &#x27;intellectual pet&#x27; type of motivation, which is ~somewhat at odds with &quot;broadening my horizons&quot;. Why not explore &#x27;new [advanced] things to create&#x27; in one of the most fun languages you already know? Or, get excited by exploring a dimension such as &#x27;performance&#x27;, or &#x27;distribution&#x27;, etc.<p>So, my 2c is first decide if you want to be a linguist or a writer.
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medo-bearover 3 years ago
Look into Common Lisp and Coalton used in quantum computing<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;coalton-lang.github.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;coalton-lang.github.io&#x2F;</a>
auxymover 3 years ago
Personally, as mostly a hobbyist, I&#x27;ve been having a lot of fun lately with Nim, including running it on microcontrollers!
throwaway81523over 3 years ago
I would say Haskell. You might not find it directly useful in practice, but it will strengthen your mind like nothing else on your list.
emteyczover 3 years ago
Prolog!
srivathsaharishover 3 years ago
f# all day long