Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=286046

by prakash • 18 years ago

27 110 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

pyroman• 18 years ago

I think it's awesome that I've only just begun to learn python and there are all these other languages out there for me to check out.

I haven't even heard of half of these, so I know what I'm doing the rest of the day.

phoolish• 18 years ago

C#, F#. MPI isnt a language, it's a || programming comm library

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

F# (OCaml)

Hates_• 18 years ago

Objective C

prakash7• 18 years ago

I missed that one, seems to be really popular now thanks to the iphone.

ardit334• 18 years ago

unfortunately. Mixing Objective-C and C and your code looks a little bit frankestein-ly, and it is impossible to avoid. The messaging pass part of Object-C is no near as elegant as erlang.

azsromej• 18 years ago

Made my first foray into ObjC this weekend; my goal is to create some iPhone/Touch apps.

brianmckenzie• 18 years ago

Objective-C here, too. It's kinda cool because I get to re-learn C at the same time.

hbien• 18 years ago

I started diving into it 4 months ago for fun. At first, I didn't like its syntax style. In case anyone is wondering, this is what I'm talking about:

object.message(arg1, arg2) vs. [object messageOne:arg1 Two:arg2]

But now I'm really enjoying it and working at it full time.

darreld• 18 years ago

Objective C

silentbicycle• 18 years ago

Yacc

rincewind• 18 years ago

Smalltalk

qwph3• 18 years ago

I'm currently reading a book about Smalltalk - does that count?

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

Why just read the book? Download Squeak - a bit far from the mainstream expectations, but it's free in the best sense. Or you can get VisualWorks Non-Commercial. (There's a very under-appreciated ASP-like web app framework in VisualWorks!)

dougfort• 18 years ago

F# (and not OCaml)

prakash7• 18 years ago

Ocaml is another popular language that I missed. Sorry.

truebosko• 18 years ago

I'm still getting better at Python but I'm really intrigued by Erlang and Lisp. I'm not sure if I want to delve into Lisp but we shall see.

Fun fact: I've never heard of Q, MPI, and Cuda .. time to wiki em :)

Bjoern• 18 years ago

bkudria• 18 years ago

Scheme (does this fit under LISP?)

fogus• 18 years ago

No it does not... but this is my choice.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

I'd say yes, because Scheme is a Lisp and I don't know any specific language that's called just Lisp except perhaps the original one by McCarthy. As far as I know Common Lisp and Scheme are the two Lisp languages in usage today.

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

Um...why are Ruby and Python combined?!

Creates separate choices

eznet2• 18 years ago

I thought the same thing here - unique languages with distinctive paradigms, deserving of separate choices.

prakash7• 18 years ago

My thought process was, if Python and/or Ruby is on the to learn list, they would look at both, but go with one of them.

mark_ellul• 18 years ago

I agree

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

Python

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

Ruby

DaniFong7• 18 years ago

It's sort of a combination of the two; Lisp Flavored Erlang, for real time control.

prakash7• 18 years ago

which language are you talking about?

DaniFong7• 18 years ago

Robert Virding's Lisp Flavored Erlang, which, among other things, does away with records, neatens up the syntax, and enabled Lisp style macros, but is still built on Erlang, and still contains it's high quality pattern matching.

Virding is one of the original contributors of Erlang.

http://groups.google.com/group/erlang-questions/browse_threa...

Copied here:

I have finally released LFE, Lisp Flavoured Erlang, which is a lisp syntax front-end to the Erlang compiler. Code produced with it is compatible with "normal" Erlang code. The is an LFE-mode for Emacs and the lfe-mode.el file is include in the distribution. Most things seem to work but some things have not been done yet:

- The interpreter does handle recursive letrecs, binaries, receive or try. - There is no lisp shell. - Documentation!

Yet. The system will be updated as new features are added. This is the 1st release so there is much left to do.

I have include the existing documentation lfe_guide.txt in this mail. There are a number of LFE test files and a version of the LFE interpreter written in LFE as examples of code. There are also a number of issues which need to be decided for the next version and I have included a file lfe_issues.txt which describe them in this mail. Both files are in the distribution.

Note that while this this lisp has been inspired by Scheme (one of the issues) it is a NOT Scheme, it is Erlang with a lisp syntax and many nice lisp features. Not for that matter is it Common Lisp. In fact features of the Erlang engine mean that it is actually impossible to implement full Scheme of CL. No, they shouldn't be changed or added.

It was quite writing Erlang code in lisp and I could easily consider using a lisp syntax for Erlang. I suppose it depends where your preferences lye. It was also easy to get into the traditional lisp habit of using long names for everything which I personally think is not a Good Thing. Perhaps we should do AFE, Arc Flavoured Erlang, instead? Although I think they have gone too far and missed what makes programs easy to read.

Macros are very nice, and it is easy to generate LFE code, which is one of the benefits of lisp syntax.

LFE also shows that it would probably be possible to write other front-ends inspired by other languages, though why anyone should want to I don't know. Perhaps back to a real Prolog syntax again.

larryfreeman• 18 years ago

php

DavidSJ• 18 years ago

I'm sorry.

goodmike• 18 years ago

self (Mwah hah hah hah hah!)

Triis• 18 years ago

Is Ruby/Python similar to C/C++?

hendler• 18 years ago

no.

C precedes C++ (and uses the same basic syntax) and C++ changes the paradigm to object oriented (but like C is statically typed and compiled). Ruby and Python are part of the same paradigm of dynamic, object oriented languages.

pavelludiq• 18 years ago

i voter for ruby/python, but i already know python well, so its ruby.

compay• 18 years ago

Lua

An elegant, minimalistic and fast scripting language. It's like Javascript without all the cruft.

ardit334• 18 years ago

i second that. Lua is very much fun to work with. It has actually full closures, upvars, and functions are first class citizen.

The only thing is lacking a little bit of OO design. It is duable, but OO on lua always feels a little bit hacky.

richcollins• 18 years ago

If you like Lua, but want OO, try Io:

http://iolanguage.com/

It was inspired by Lua (among others).

gcv• 18 years ago

Haskell. I tried three times so far, and stalled each time once I reached monad transformers. Scratch that: I consistently stalled at understanding monads. I understand the Maybe monad, but I couldn't wrap my head around the implementation of the State monad. Then I looked at monad transformers, and they made my eyes cross. (If Haskell's syntax was just a tiny bit less jarring to my Lisp-addled eyes, maybe I'd try more often than once a year...)

dats• 18 years ago

Have you seen this? http://uebb.cs.tu-berlin.de/~magr/pub/Transformers.en.html

It's the best intro to monad transformers I've come across.

andhapp• 18 years ago

Groovy (or is it considered Java)

ii• 18 years ago

OCaml and Objective C

stanley• 18 years ago

Java

fedecarg• 18 years ago

The creator of this Poll is a PHP programmer, that's why PHP is not on the list.

ecommercematt• 18 years ago

GW-BASIC

falsestprophet• 18 years ago

QBasic

dill_day• 18 years ago

Haskell

systems• 18 years ago

Mozart (http://www.mozart-oz.org/) by reading "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" (http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html)

orib• 18 years ago

All of the above to various degrees? I'd want to at least get a vague feel for what each of them is good for, how it interacts with the system, and the general thought processes that accompany it for each one of them, so that I could say that "I could write something in it with some research".

It's more about expanding my mind than about picking up a tool, with a number of exceptions for my workhorse languages (which are constantly changing)

gtani• 18 years ago

factor, Ocaml/ jocaml, groovy,

rw• 18 years ago

sspencer• 18 years ago

Ouch, zero points for Arc. Even MPI has one (prospective) devotee!

I voted Haskell, because their libraries are finally getting the language to a point where it is competitive. There's even a story about this on the front page today!

DaniFong7• 18 years ago

I've already spent some time learning Arc; I intend to integrate some features into lisp flavored erlang, as below.

rtf• 18 years ago

I have no plans to learn new languages for the time being. I've been exposed to most of the big concepts, so I feel a creeping sense of diminishing returns as I have to invest time in increasingly different syntaxes to learn anything really different.

That is time I could spend building out more productive libraries and architecture for my real goals.

OneSeventeen• 18 years ago

I'm currently learning Flex, which I guess means I'm learning ActionScript? I have to say I'm not enjoying it as much as I enjoy Ruby.

omnipath• 18 years ago

Ada

greyman• 18 years ago

None - at least in the near future. (Now I am curious if true hackers will downmod me for that. ;-)).

apgwoz• 18 years ago

I started learning OCaml to beef up for a class I'm taking in the fall, so I guess that's next. But, I'm also a student of the Scheme way of life and am always learning it.

kaens• 18 years ago

C and x86 assembly.

I've been floating in high-level land for too long, feel like I need to get close(r) to the metal.

ken• 18 years ago

Factor

walesmd• 18 years ago

Cobra

maxklein• 18 years ago

I'm also going for Objective C. The rest are a bit too not useful.

13ren• 18 years ago

Coq, a proof assistant (http://coq.inria.fr/); lectures: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/cis500-f07/schedule.html

dmpayton• 18 years ago

My "to-learn" list has three items on it, and I'm torn about which to pursue first...

  * Lisp (Interesting, recently bought pg's ACL)
  * C (Would be useful at work, recently bought K&R)
  * Obj-C (Have both an iPhone and a MBPro that would be neat to develop for)

I'm leaning towards C.

[edit: list formatting]

MattGeri• 18 years ago

Python and Django framework.

philh• 18 years ago

At some point I intend to learn Arc, Python and Erlang, but I have no immediate plans to do so. Knowing them isn't going to do me much good until I can finish a reasonable-sized project.

macco• 18 years ago

Old C.

lambdatronic• 18 years ago

Clojure, people! If you haven't yet checked out Rich Hickey's new functional lisp for concurrent programming on the JVM, then you're missing out on something really, really, mind-blowingly cool! I'm a Lispnik at heart, and I do most of my personal development in Common Lisp on SBCL, but I have to program a lot of Java code for my day job. Clojure has definitely caught my eye and is #1 on my list of next languages to learn.

Check it out: http://clojure.org

miked• 18 years ago

+1 for Clojure. S-expression based language with macros, runs efficiently on the JVM with type hints, all the Java libraries available. Callable from Java. Cleans up side effects nicely, while still allowing them when needed. Strong support for easy threading. Escape Java's high-ceremony hell without having to quit the job. Highly recommended.

chriseidhof• 18 years ago

Agda, a dependently typed language. The syntax looks like Haskell, but the types are a lot more sophisticated.

calambrac• 18 years ago

I know dynamic languages are all the rage these days, and that Haskell is on the rise, but Scala is really sexy to me right now.

All of my large-ish projects have been in either Java or Python (I've done smaller things in Ruby, Haskell, CL, Erlang, C, C++ - I enjoy playing around with different languages). I love the conciseness of Python, but I always find myself either spending way too much time writing tests or hunting down bugs after simple refactorings. Java, on the other hand, is, as a language, misery incarnate, but there's something intensely satisfying about being able to just delete large chunks of code and have the compiler tell me exactly where the functionality those chunks provided needs to be replaced.

I had looked at Scala in the past, but always from the POV of learning functional programming. For the last week, though, I've just been treating it as a Java replacement, and I'm in love. It has the same feeling of liberation as the first time I really dug into Python (and is actually more expressive than Python in several cases I've come across), but I can use my slash-and-burn refactoring style without any hiccups.

It inherits the huge number of Java libraries out there, and it has a fantastic web framework (liftweb), an Erlang-style concurrency library that feels like a built-in part of the language, pattern-matching, etc. etc. People evaluating languages for new projects should really take a serious look into this one.

jlouis• 18 years ago

Coq.

Yes that's right. I regard it a programming language.

brent• 18 years ago

What is the obsession with learning loads of programming languages? If you pick well, you only need a couple and you can spend your time and mental energy building new things.

Note: This is not to say I do not appreciate the value of learning different languages. It just seems to be an obsession to tally up as many different languages as possible instead of building new stuff with the languages you know.

streblo• 18 years ago

does matlab count?

HeyLaughingBoy• 18 years ago

PHP I'm an embedded systems programmer not a web guy, although I have done some simple CGI stuff. Under my belt: C, C++, C#, a number of assemblers, Python, Lisp, Prolog, Java, BASIC

hb• 18 years ago

C++

hsmyers• 18 years ago

Haskell or maybe Erlang.

mikhailfranco• 18 years ago

You could use the Maybe monad in Haskell to wrap learning Erlang

ra• 18 years ago

AVR GCC

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

is MPI a language? I thought it was just c library for parallel processing.

dhotson• 18 years ago

COBOL

ducks ;)

jamongkad2• 18 years ago

Scheme

SohumB• 18 years ago

Lisp. I've snagged a copy of On Lisp and of SICP, and am working through the 6.001 lectures.

dkd• 18 years ago

LabVIEW .. or it's quite powerful and nice RAD language.

Tamerlin• 18 years ago

After Lisp, I want to start learning F#. After that, who knows? :)

Poll: Which programming language do you plan on learning next?

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