New languages [programming] by tomasino | tildeverse BBJ

>0 tomasino @ 2019/10/21 13:58

A lot of people in the tildeverse code. Lets chat about what languages are
new to you and what you're excited to be learning! I'll start:

- Ada

I learned some basic ada programming in college and it has been lingering
in the back of my mind ever since. I love the safety and deliberate nature
it has, and since I don't really have a well grok'd tool in my belt for
low-level stuff this seemed like a good fit. 

Why ada? Why not Go or Rust or whatever? Well, I don't have a job that
requires me to be competitive in the latest and greatest, so I can choose
my poison by what appeals to me instead. Ada has a philosophy that is
different and I appreciate it.


- v

The v programming language came out earlier this year and it's quickly on
its path to a 1.0 release. Despite some early negative press, the language
is very real and works. It's c-like in many ways, and go-like in others,
but mostly it's a minimal language focused on speed.

Why v? I could learn the entire language in 30 minutes. Seriously. I did,
and I wrote and contributed a module to the ecosystem within 2 more hours
after that.

It's so early in its life that there's plenty for people to do and to
contribute. I wrote easing functions as a module, for example. Someone
will need them soon and I was in early enough to be the one to do it.


I've been tempted to look into elixir as well, but I'll try to keep myself
from getting pulled in too many directions at once.

So what about you all? What languages are new to you? Why are they
appealing and what do you hope to do with them?

>1 ngp @ 2019/10/25 00:00

>>OP

Not really new to me, but I've been working with Go a lot for personal projects.
I even recently released an open source library in it: https://github.com/chiefnoah/goalpost
My current dayjob is mostly in Python, but I'd like to find something in Go, or something
similar.

I think I'm going to start looking at C again in the near future,
as I'd like to get more into systems development.

>2 mhd @ 2019/10/27 22:00

I'm currently quite torn when it comes to new languages to learn. For one,
at work we're a bit too much into non-popular tech. Most of our backend is
built with Perl, which doesn't enjoy much popularity. So it's hard to get
new hires. That means focusing on newer languages just for the sake of
popularity (Perl is actually quite okay).

That means I'm getting a bit into Typescript, to make outsourcing and
"onboarding" easier -- not a big fan of plain old JavaScript and its
ecosystem.

And if I want to get away from this, I probably have to learn more hyped
languages to increase my market value. And most of the current crop just
doesn't excite me.
I'd rather write Pascal than Go (which is basically Oberon crossed with
Java), rather SML than Rust, rather Perl or Tcl than Python.

On the "just for my pure enjoyment", I'm trying to focus on two "features":
Older, less popular languages, and things that are closer to the bare metal.
You can combine those, so Pascal is high on my list (FreePascal), as is its
close relative Modula-3. Didn't want to go as far as Eiffel or Ada regarding
verbosity.

But I'm a firm believer in alternating software layers, so if I build
something closer to bare metal (like a game or server), I need some
scripting, and that's probably going to be Tcl instead of the more popular
alternatives.

On yet another hand, there's just been a new releae of Haxe, a language
which I always admired from afar.

>3 LickTheCheese @ 2019/10/28 18:17

>>2

why does the go compiler use so much storage?

i would try out go, but i would run out of storage :(

>4 mhd @ 2019/10/30 20:08

>>3
As in HD space? It's quite big on arch (478 MB), smaller on Debian,
where it's in a similar category to Clang/LLVM, GCC, FreePascal or
Java. Compiled languages with utilities and libraries get big fast.

And to be honest, I'd much rather have that than a 30 meg package and
then a package manager that pulls in 800 MB of un-auditied spurious
dependencies for any project bigger than Hello World...

What bothered me more were the RAM requirements a few versions back,
where it was impossible to compile some small utilities/servers on a
low-end VPS.

And, well, the fandom.

>5 renee @ 2019/10/31 18:42

Rust has been my baby for a while now, it's been an incredible language 
for me in terms of just being able to sit down with an idea and just 
start being productive right away (after the initial learning curve for 
the language itself, which did end up being a lot less steep than people 
had been warning me).

Vlang to me just seems like the admirable goal of a developer who's way 
out of his depth. I think that if you're into learning about compilers 
and programming language design (I'm not) then keeping up with that 
development is probably a good learning experience. Do look at Zig 
though, which is mostly what V feels like minus a leg to stand on.

I've tried a bunch of times to get into Nim too, and I wish it had 
clicked as well as Rust did. Its metaprogramming features seem like the 
dream, though I always find it so easy to make mistakes with semantic 
whitespace.

>6 LickTheCheese @ 2019/11/04 03:00

>>5

there was a kid named Nim at my school two years ago who may or may not have made a hole in the ceiling tile during gym class

>7 jacksonbenete @ 2021/06/09 14:59

My favorite languages are Lisp and Erlang.

I've been out of Software Engineering career for some years.
When I worked with it I used to write mostly PHP, JavaScript and some Python.

I try my best to be mature regarding this, I want to believe and constantly 
repeat that there is no best language, but the appropriate tool for the job.

But, I confess that one of the reasons that I left the career back then 
was that PHP is a mess (or was), and the only other opportunities in my 
country back then was Java, which is a languagem I never liked.

So I believe that each language can be the best one depending of the problem 
you want to solve but I can't deny that I prefer to work with my language 
of choice.

I'm trying to come back to the career after some years out and there is a 
lot of new things to learn.
It's been hard to find a job, because I'm being picky and I don't want to 
work with PHP and JavaScript again, and there is no Junior positions on 
the languages I want to work with.

Those languages are the ones that are both new to me and I'm excited to learn.
I think that I would be happier working with some of those even if I need 
to go back being a Junior again.

- Elixir

As I've said, Erlang is one of my favorite languages, and while I don't like 
Elixir syntax, it's probably my best shot to ever work with "Erlang" (BEAM).

- Clojure

I've said that I hate Java... But, Lisp is one of my favorite languages, just
like with Elixir, Clojure is the best bet to ever be able to work with "Lisp".


---

What else I'm studying or looking forward to study:

- Assembly

Not new to me, but I've never learned it properly before.
Now that I'm going back to the career I want to be a better 
"Software Engineer" than I was before, so I think I should improve and deepen
my understanding of Computer Architecture and Compilers.
I'm in fact having a lot of fun learning Assembly, I'm studying the book 
"Programming from the Ground Up".

- C/C++

I'm not really sure which one to pick, I think I'll go for C since I'm not 
an OOP lover.
I've used both in college back then but I never did anything serious apart 
from some algorithms and numerical methods for matrices computation.

---

I'm interested in V now that you've talked about it, I would like to be able 
to contribute for something starting, but I'm afraid I don't have the time 
right now. Maybe after I manage to stablish myself in the career again I can 
take a look into something new.

Talking about new languages, there is one that is also starting and I want
to devote myself into learning and contributing, which is LFE.

- LFE

This is the holy grail for me, it's name stands for "Lisp Flavored Erlang".
That's right, Lisp + Erlang, the two languages I love in the same place. :)

There is some cool videos of Robert Virding using it on Youtube, 
Virding is not only the creator of LFE but one of the creators of Erlang as 
well, so you can be sure that LFE is a language that now how to integrate 
and to use everything good we have on Erlang. :)

>8 grawlix @ 2021/08/18 10:41

I've had to dabble in many languages over the years but when I need to 
write some code for myself, I usually reach for Python or Scheme. In 
the past few years, it has been mostly Python and Emacs Lisp, which is 
arguably more of a DSL than an actual Lisp anyway.

Sometimes I miss Forth on 8-bit micros. It was a lot of fun, but I would 
be hard pressed to return to explicitly managing memory.

>9 jacksonbenete @ 2021/09/06 18:00

>>8

Interestingly,
I'm not a good C or Assembly engineer, so this is not a statement from someone
that really have lots of experience doing it.
But, I have more fun (and I even think it's easier) to manage memory using
Assembly than in C.

>10 mwt @ 2021/10/02 07:45

I'm learning a bit of php as a result of having a user page here!