I think this is a path that many have been down: "I'll only work in language X, I don't need other languages, they look too foreign to me and basically do the same thing anyway, I stand to lose a lot of time for no gain"
"Oh, but I already do use other languages, never thought about it like that, guess I must be more cosmopolitan than I thought!" "and... yes, these other languages do cover areas that just wouldn't handle at all well, maybe there's some merit to other paradigms after all" "I can also see that my current approach really wouldn't sit well on a machine with 100s of cores, as it is I already HATE debugging deadlocks and race conditions - and that's only on 2 cores!" ... after finding a bit of time to properly investigate closures, pattern matching and immutability and actors with an open mind ... "ah-hah, NOW I can see what all the fuss is about. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but I can already see a few areas where this type of thinking will make me a better programmer. I still can't ever imagine getting my head around Haskell though" Don't worry about Haskell, it's just one (extreme) end of the paradigm, what counts is having another way of thinking, another trick in your mental "toolbox" Oh, and these are NOT modern paradigms, I would invite you to look at the Wikipedia entry on the history of programming languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages Lambda calculus dates back to the 1930s. So in a very real sense, functional programming existed before programmable computers. On 12 July 2010 12:00, Wildam Martin <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 11:27, Kevin Wright <[email protected]> > wrote: > > All developers work with multiple languages on a daily basis. > > Java (procedural/OO) > > SQL (declarative) > > XSLT (declarative) > > build tool scripting (declarative) > > shell script (procedural/OO) > > JavaScript (OO/functional) > > etc. > > Aha, I think I can see our misunderstanding here: In this discussion I > do not consider SQL, XSLT and the like as "languages" - I am talking > solely about "real" programming languages. > > Of course declarative "languages" (including those you mentioned) make > sense a lot in a lot of cases! > > > > The trend is definitely that declarative languages are filling the niches > > and they're not your "80%" solution. > > But they are a "20%" solution for 20% you can't do without, usually in > areas > > that people don't think to include in a list of languages they use when > > "programming". But you *do* use multiple languages, we all do... > > Fully agree with you, but I didn't consider SQL, XSLT etc as > programming languages. > > > > I feel I can state that SQL, and the current generation of alternatives > for > > NoSQL stores, has succeeded quite well! > > NoSQL successed for a lot of cases where SQL always had performance > problems or in cases where databases are used as trashcan for data. So > I consider NoSQL stores as a supplement to SQL and never as a > replacement. But there are many people (usually not the developers but > the managers) considering NoSQL as modern replacement for SQL which > IMHO is nonsense if taken generally. > > > > and then... then there's your GPU. Able to handle thousands of > concurrent > > operations and increasingly being used for tasks that are nothing to do > with > > graphics. > > You are right, the parallelism need to be taken more into > consideration. But this is a general concern and IMHO not necessarily > only economically achievable using more "modern" paradigms. > > -- > Martin Wildam > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- Kevin Wright mail/google talk: [email protected] wave: [email protected] skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
