On Wed, 2011-03-02 at 10:26 +0100, Moandji Ezana wrote: > In the past few years, there's been a lot of emphasis on learning > programming languages, driven by the Pragmatic Programmer's "Learn a > new language every year" maxim and the JVM language boom. It does have > a lot of benefits, but I wonder if its importance hasn't been > overestimated. > > > Is there something about learning a language that is fundamentally > more mind-expanding than other things, such as: > > > - moving from server to client > - learning about asynchronous/messaging architectures > - learning about usability/UX/design > - learning about NoSQL/Big Data architectures > - ... > > > ?
Yes there is. See Marian Petre's PhD thesis and her work since, including that with Thomas Green and Alan Blackwell. I am not sure I hold with the rigidity of "learn a new language each year" maxim, not least because learning a new language is a 9+ month activity. and you need consolidation time, but it does stem from an excellent guiding principle: good programmers know how to use idiomatically at least three or four programming languages that have different computational models. So list all the languages of interest, put them into equivalence classes of fundamental computational model, select from each equivalence class, learn. There is also benefit from comparison within an equivalence class, but the core benefit it from cross equivalence class fertilization. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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