> > > But the fact remains that Lisp is quite an obscure languge. >> > I'm not sure what you mean by obscure --- I'll assume that you are just > observing that > most programmers are unfamiliar with it. They are instead familiar with > C, Java, Basic, (see the tiobe survey). >
Isn't that the definition of obscure? > > >> Very few outside computer science students learn it. >> > Regardless of the obscurity, students who take a course or study the > Abelson-Sussman > book are likely to be much much better programmers than otherwise. That > book happens > to use Scheme, a dialect of Lisp. It doesn't matter if they eventually > end up writing C code. > Or python. > It doesn't matter which language someone learns that determines how good of a programmer they are. However have good command and understanding of the idiosyncrasies of the languages that a programmer uses is much more important that what language they learned on. I have never really used lisp (or learned too much about it), and many of the programmers I know never have either, but I consider myself a pretty good programmer and I know some really good ones who (I don't think) know what lisp is. > > > Whereas learning C++, C, Python, MATLAB, Labview etc is likely to be >> beneficial for employment, the same is not true of Lisp. >> > If the only thing you have to offer is "I learned C", then you don't have > much. An employer > would have to be pretty dim to not realize that if you know a few > programming languages, you > can learn one more in a short time. A good employer might hire a > programmer to write > C code BECAUSE the programmer knew Lisp. > I'm pretty sure a good employer will hire someone who only knows C++ (note, not C) over only known lisp because it is lower-level and is much more common (and other languages are similar like Java and C#). > > >> I don't think a program like could exist if developers needed to learn >> Lisp first. >> > I think you left out the word "Sage" in there. The program Maxima > exists, and most > serious developers very likely know Lisp. Same for Axiom, Reduce. A > programmer > already skilled in another higher level language can generally pick up > Lisp fairly easily, since > it is extraordinarily "regular" in syntax and semantics. > I agree they can learn higher level languages easily enough, but there are more concepts to learn in lower level languages (e.g. memory management). Best, Travis -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
