Dangling Conversations

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Concerning programming languages

Posted 05 Jun, 2005 at 16:18 by matt in /Technical | Permanent link

Prompted in part by clevermonkey's latest post, I've been reading up on some non-traditional programming languages lately. (Well, non-traditional if one feels that the mainstream of programming languages is the family tree that starts with Algol, but that's an argument for another day.)

Back when I was young and foolish (i.e. a frosh), I was a computer science major. I gave that up fairly quickly, but one thing that I sort of regret was never having the opportunity to take the fourth-year class in programming languages. My interest in this is principally anthropological, actually; I don't care about know a bunch of computer langauges so much as knowing how the different structures affect how the developper thinks about their task.

So for those of you who actually program on a regular basis & have picked up multiple languages along the way, a question: how much difference does choice of language seem to make to coding decisions? Do you actually think differently in different languages, or is your style more or less unchanged as you hop between, say, C, Java, and perl?

Comments (1 comment so far)
I definitely feel that my brain works differently depending on the language I choose. I don't think my approach changes a lot, mind you, but I notice that my attitudes and assumptions about the problem space change quite a bit depending on the toolset I happen to be using. It's nothing really specific, either. I just sort of feel a metal switching of gears when I move from one tool to the next -- especially so if I haven't use a particular language in a while. Now, that being said, I also happen to think that the first serious language you learn can really affect how you use all other languages and approach new problems. There is a truism in the Forth community that you may not be able to use Forth professionally very often, but learning it made one a better C (Java, Smalltalk, Lisp) programmer.
Posted 2005/6/8 05:16:18 by clvrmnky
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