7 ms·

As someone who is currently "In Love With Python", I'm curious what other languages you recommend? I'm always looking to learn new stuff.

falcolas 12y ago
Depends on what you want to do. Go is a fairly strong candidate for a straight up replacement for Python, but there will be a lot of newer things to learn with regards to using a compiled language without a repl, and the lack of traditional polymorphism. Another good one is any kind of functional language, be it Haskell, Clojure, or OCaml. Learning how to think functionally will help your Python code quite a bit. At some point in the future, Rust would be a good one to put on your list, but I don't believe that it is in a great place right now. It's getting better, but I don't feel that it's ready yet for production development. I think Mozilla can get away with it because they own the minds who are developing the language, and as such can hit the moving target which Rust currently is.
- mpthrapp 12y ago
  I'm not quite sure what I want to do, other than I don't want to do front-end development. The other language I have any experience in is Delphi, which is a compiled language. I have heard a lot of good things about Go, maybe I'll give that a shot. I'd love to learn a functional language. I've looked at Haskell, and ouch. As someone with no formalized CS training, a lot of the type theory stuff goes right over my head. Is there a less crazy functional language you would recommend? Yeah, I've looked a little at Rust, and it looks like it'll be interesting in a couple years.
  - falcolas 12y ago
    > Is there a less crazy functional language you would recommend? Clojure. It's a well supported and documented dialect of Lisp, which is a fundamentally functional language (though not purely functional), implemented on a platform that just about everyone has access to: the JVM. The more you can minimize your use of the dot operator (which implicitly means minimizing your dependence on Java libraries), the more you'll learn about functional programming.
    - mpthrapp 12y ago
      Alright, thanks. I'll give Clojure a shot at some point. I've played around with lisp a tiny bit in the context of reading SCIP, but that's about it.
  - codygman 12y ago
    You might want to look at Haskell again and not read too much into the type theory stuff at first, but learn how to use common monads, functors, etc. Here's some code that might be convincing and understandable (correct me if I'm wrong!): From a not quite yet ready to release everywhere web scraping library of mine in Haskell: main = runScraper $ do get "https://www.paypal.com/login" postToForm (Name "login_form") (Just creds) AllVisible get "https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/home" cursor <- liftM (fromMaybe (error "Couldn't get cursor")) getCurrentCursor liftIO . putStrLn $ "Your Paypal balance is: " <> getPaypalBalance cursor where creds = [ ("login_email", "email@example.com") -- put your credentials here , ("login_password", "password")] An example of using lenses and imperative programming to create pong[0]: -- Update the paddles updatePaddles :: Float -> State Pong () updatePaddles time = do p <- get let paddleMovement = time * paddleSpeed keyPressed key = p^.keys.contains (SpecialKey key) -- Update the player's paddle based on keys when (keyPressed KeyUp) $ paddle1 += paddleMovement when (keyPressed KeyDown) $ paddle1 -= paddleMovement -- Calculate the optimal position let optimal = hitPos (p^.ballPos) (p^.ballSpeed) acc = accuracy p target = optimal * acc + (p^.ballPos._y) * (1 - acc) dist = target - p^.paddle2 -- Move the CPU's paddle towards this optimal position as needed when (abs dist > paddleHeight/3) $ case compare dist 0 of GT -> paddle2 += paddleMovement LT -> paddle2 -= paddleMovement _ -> return () -- Make sure both paddles don't leave the playing area paddle1 %= clamp (paddleHeight/2) paddle2 %= clamp (paddleHeight/2) From "Program imperatively using Haskell lenses"[1]: battle :: StateT Game IO () battle = do -- Charge! forM_ ["Take that!", "and that!", "and that!"] $ \taunt -> do lift $ putStrLn taunt strike -- The dragon awakes! fireBreath (Point 0.5 1.5) replicateM_ 3 $ do -- The better part of valor retreat -- Boss chases them zoom (boss.position) $ do x += 10 y += 10

falcolas 12y ago

Depends on what you want to do. Go is a fairly strong candidate for a straight up replacement for Python, but there will be a lot of newer things to learn with regards to using a compiled language without a repl, and the lack of traditional polymorphism. Another good one is any kind of functional language, be it Haskell, Clojure, or OCaml. Learning how to think functionally will help your Python code quite a bit. At some point in the future, Rust would be a good one to put on your list, but I don't believe that it is in a great place right now. It's getting better, but I don't feel that it's ready yet for production development. I think Mozilla can get away with it because they own the minds who are developing the language, and as such can hit the moving target which Rust currently is.

mpthrapp 12y ago
I'm not quite sure what I want to do, other than I don't want to do front-end development. The other language I have any experience in is Delphi, which is a compiled language. I have heard a lot of good things about Go, maybe I'll give that a shot. I'd love to learn a functional language. I've looked at Haskell, and ouch. As someone with no formalized CS training, a lot of the type theory stuff goes right over my head. Is there a less crazy functional language you would recommend? Yeah, I've looked a little at Rust, and it looks like it'll be interesting in a couple years.
- falcolas 12y ago
  > Is there a less crazy functional language you would recommend? Clojure. It's a well supported and documented dialect of Lisp, which is a fundamentally functional language (though not purely functional), implemented on a platform that just about everyone has access to: the JVM. The more you can minimize your use of the dot operator (which implicitly means minimizing your dependence on Java libraries), the more you'll learn about functional programming.
  - mpthrapp 12y ago
    Alright, thanks. I'll give Clojure a shot at some point. I've played around with lisp a tiny bit in the context of reading SCIP, but that's about it.
- codygman 12y ago
  You might want to look at Haskell again and not read too much into the type theory stuff at first, but learn how to use common monads, functors, etc. Here's some code that might be convincing and understandable (correct me if I'm wrong!): From a not quite yet ready to release everywhere web scraping library of mine in Haskell: main = runScraper $ do get "https://www.paypal.com/login" postToForm (Name "login_form") (Just creds) AllVisible get "https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/home" cursor <- liftM (fromMaybe (error "Couldn't get cursor")) getCurrentCursor liftIO . putStrLn $ "Your Paypal balance is: " <> getPaypalBalance cursor where creds = [ ("login_email", "email@example.com") -- put your credentials here , ("login_password", "password")] An example of using lenses and imperative programming to create pong[0]: -- Update the paddles updatePaddles :: Float -> State Pong () updatePaddles time = do p <- get let paddleMovement = time * paddleSpeed keyPressed key = p^.keys.contains (SpecialKey key) -- Update the player's paddle based on keys when (keyPressed KeyUp) $ paddle1 += paddleMovement when (keyPressed KeyDown) $ paddle1 -= paddleMovement -- Calculate the optimal position let optimal = hitPos (p^.ballPos) (p^.ballSpeed) acc = accuracy p target = optimal * acc + (p^.ballPos._y) * (1 - acc) dist = target - p^.paddle2 -- Move the CPU's paddle towards this optimal position as needed when (abs dist > paddleHeight/3) $ case compare dist 0 of GT -> paddle2 += paddleMovement LT -> paddle2 -= paddleMovement _ -> return () -- Make sure both paddles don't leave the playing area paddle1 %= clamp (paddleHeight/2) paddle2 %= clamp (paddleHeight/2) From "Program imperatively using Haskell lenses"[1]: battle :: StateT Game IO () battle = do -- Charge! forM_ ["Take that!", "and that!", "and that!"] $ \taunt -> do lift $ putStrLn taunt strike -- The dragon awakes! fireBreath (Point 0.5 1.5) replicateM_ 3 $ do -- The better part of valor retreat -- Boss chases them zoom (boss.position) $ do x += 10 y += 10