I like your points about distinguishing between languages and dialects, and considering context of learning something new. I had my first computer programming courses in 1999 (x86 assembly and C programming). I did it as a part of my undergraduate degree. I was very fascinated that you could communicate your ideas as a set of instructions (programming? algorithmic thinking would be more appropriate IMO) which could then be executed. Over the years I've picked up different languages (SQL, R/J/Numpy, Lisp/Haskell/Ocaml) and I think my understanding has grown because of different mental processing required for each of these languages. I also didn't realize until much later (that is when I started reading outside of work) that I'm very interested in natural language processing (human, not computer!), music processing, and cognition. Charlie Munger also keeps on saying that your ideas have to fit within a latticework of mental models.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Aistis Raulinaitis <[email protected]> wrote: > > My thought is that it might have something to do with "rational ignorance". > There is so much out there to learn, and the biggest worry on most peoples > mind is "lots of libs and big community". This leads to a certain > "premature optimization" in language choice, in essence ruling out any > language that has a smaller community than say, Scala. So it is "rational" > to remain ignorant of other languages until you need to learn them, because > to them the time it takes to learn a new language is seen as too much of a > price for its possible benefits. > > Now I'm sure we here are a bit different, I'm sure that most people that > have learned J can pick up nearly any language in a couple of hours and > within a few days be coding as if it was their first language. I'm sure > that most J programmers have some experience with a wide variety of > languages from the popular to the less popular ones like Forth, Agda, Shen, > and Mercury, etc. You soon realize how similar most languages are to each > other, *especially* the popular ones, and you realize that the cost of > picking up a new language is now super low, because you have been exposed > to so many vastly different types of languages. > > This then leads to a kind of disillusionment about other's views on > languages, you realize that many people see languages as that, languages. > When the correct conception would be more to call each language a dialect, > because of the overwhelming similarities. Java, C++, and C# are more like > different dialects of Spanish, rather than entirely different languages > like Mandarin, Swahili, and German. So when people think about learning a > new programming language, they see it as if they are about to learn > something with no context to what they know already, which is obviously > wrong. > > So to tie it all up, because of the overestimation of the difficulty of > learning new languages, and the heavy dependence on pre-existing code, most > people find it "rational" to just stick with what they know. Experienced > developers don't like the feeling that they don't already know everything > there is to know and what they don't know isn't imporant enough because > they haven't heard about it before and could probably solve the problem > with one of the tools they already know because the cost of learning a new > tool seems too high for their current project. This learning gets delayed > off into infinity. > > On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 11:32 PM, Kym Farnik <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi > > I learned APL\1130 in 1971; it was my 2nd computer language after BASIC. > > The third was FORTRAN on the 1130 > > > > APL was the best by far. > > Later it was APL\370 > > > > See: http://www.users.on.net/~farnet/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Retro_Computing > > > > -- > > Regards, Kym Farnik > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
