>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!