Try these 4 languages from 4 corners of Programming (opens in new tab)

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66 pointsitsjzt5y ago45 comments

45 comments

eggy5y ago

How about adding APL and Forth and make it the 6 corners! An array-oriented language and a stack-based language would make the round trip truly mind-blowing. I have tried all of the languages mentioned, and I find myself always using J (ASCII character, APL-like language) and Lisp without intending to do so.

piinbinary5y ago

And Prolog and Erlang to round things out.

eggy5y ago

Definitely Prolog. I have barely played with Prolog except when it is included in the PL as in picoLisp or Shen, but it's in its own category. I agree about Erlang too, but it made me stop to think. Erlang without the BEAM or OTP is pretty much a functional language like Haskell, no? I looked at Pony once. Yeah, ok, Erlang too! I prefer the Lisp version: LFE!

jetti5y ago

I'm curious as to what you use J for. I know very little about the array-oriented languages and what domain they specialize in.

eggy5y ago

I started playing with it, and J became a very powerful desktop calculator. Then I started to tackle other programs in it, and I was hooked by the way it made me think about a problem. All of the selling points of functional programming, which didn't resonate when I was learning F# or Haskell or Lisp, became crystal to me when tacit programming in J or solely functions. I am a polyglot, but I like the array as the basic unit of computation (now very popular with GPUs, Pandas, and Tensorflow and all other array-laden technologies). I feel like I am distilling a problem down to a very well thought out distillation, and it brings me joy!

mamp5y ago

Good article. I’ve been fortunate to try them all, even SmallTalk when it was released for the Mac in the 80’s. Lots of code in Lisp and C. Not as much in Haskell.

My favourite so far are the ML family and F# in particular. The only language(s) I regret not learning earlier. Try F# or OCaml if you haven’t already.

erk__5y ago

My university recently put a package manager for SML up on its GitHub page. So there is still a chance for a comeback https://github.com/diku-dk/smlpkg

codr75y ago

Agree, and I've written substantial amounts of code in all of them; though I strongly prefer Common Lisp to Clojure unless already chained to the JVM.

Besides Prolog & APL, I would add Forth to the list.

MaxBarraclough5y ago

What do you make of Joy, Forth's functional cousin?

codr75y ago

Never did find the motivation to dive into Joy. I did write a lot of Haskell though, and it left a slightly sour taste.

I feel the same about statically typed functional programming as about Rust, it's a nice theory but in practice you end up squeezing problems into weird shapes to keep the language happy.

dbcurtis5y ago

Is Joy getting any active development? The only resources I could find with a quick search seem to be almost 20 years old.

1 more reply

idsout5y ago

I really enjoyed the book, Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks and regularly recommend that to people looking to expand their arsenal.

itsjztOP5y ago

+1 seven language, seven database, seven concurrency models all are great books

throw513195y ago

Is the original 7 languages worth reading?

JoelMcCracken5y ago

At this point I think the most interesting thing in smalltalk is not the OO aspects, but the integrated VM/image. Hacking around in smalltalk is such an incredible difference.

itsjztOP5y ago

Yeah

navdb5y ago

Try Nim too: https://onlinetechinfo.com/pros-and-cons-of-nim

exdsq5y ago

If I had to come up with 4 languages I'd suggest C, Idris, Lisp, and Prolog.

myth_drannon5y ago

You need to be very familiar with Haskell to tackle Idris.

ska805y ago

Actually no. Familiarity with Haskell can actually make learning Idris more difficult :). It is better if you start from scratch when learning Idris.

exdsq5y ago

There are some pretty good tutorials on Idris which cover just enough Haskell to get you started but yes, maybe it's too much in one go. Dependent Types though <3

vmchale5y ago

C and Lisp are pretty well-known!

I'd shill APL/J/etc.

ectoplasmaboiii5y ago

I would also shill one of the APL derivatives. I've gone from a happy Python dev to a die hard k/q guy very quickly. These languages completely change the way you approach a problem.

It's just a shame that q isn't free for commerical use (though it's free for personal use) and there aren't many jobs outside of finance.

eggy5y ago

I didn't see your reply before I brought up APL and J here. I've tried k several times, but I always fall back on J, then APL, and then k. I think it's personal bias, since I found J first. I like the symbols of APL as I like mathematical formulas, and now that Dyalog has adopted some J-isms, I've been trying reimplement my J stuff in Dyalog APL. Also Roger Hui of J fame is a Dyalog user too. I thought I would gravitate to k because of my Lisp background, but J is sticking with me.

itsjztOP5y ago

They are certainly very well known still in my experience I find a lot of people who haven't done C or any lisp before specially people who arent coming from CS backgroud

empath755y ago

They may be well known but a lot of people have never tried them.

channel_t5y ago

While definitely not the same, it seems somewhat misinformed to put Lisp and Haskell on 2 different corners.

em-bee5y ago

not at all. lisp and haskell are entirely different worlds. don't be fooled by the claim that lisp and haskell are both functional languages. haskell is functional to a fault, but lisp is anything you want it to be. it depends on which lisp you choose. i believe that clojure is more on the functional side, scheme somewhere in the middle, but common lisp (the language i am familiar with), is barely more functional than python. functional programming is not using functions as the main method for code organization.

Smaug1235y ago

The usual four corners I give as my examples are Haskell, C, Lisp, SQL. (That is, I usually replace the author's Smalltalk with SQL.)

I then go further and describe languages as linear combinations of these: Python as C minus Haskell plus Lisp; Mathematica as Lisp plus SQL; F# as (Haskell plus C)/2.

jheriko5y ago

thats 2 corners...

kgwxd5y ago

I'd add a corner and include 6502 assembly. It's so fun, I think Atari 2600 specifically adds some more intimacy with the hardware compared to other classic systems, but they're all fun to learn.

bluedays5y ago

Is lisp considered a functional language? I thought it more imperative

itsjztOP5y ago

Paradigm Multi-paradigm: functional, procedural, reflective, meta

Actually it is both

fnordsensei5y ago

Though Clojure in particular probably leans heavily to the functional side.

non-entity5y ago

I still want to try smalltalk, just waiting on an idea where it makes sense to use it.

itsjztOP5y ago

You can try it in backend server for your pet peojects.

jancsika5y ago

If a mad scientist removed all the outermost parentheses in the clojure example and made it work the same as the current example in the article, what bad things would happen as a result?

itsjztOP5y ago

You might discover ruby

smlckz5y ago

You should try Tcl.

brutt5y ago

C + Haskel = Rust.

smlckz5y ago

I think, C++ U OCaml ===> Rust.

Do you know about any language with as strong or stronger borrow checker than that of Rust?

smlckz5y ago

>> Currently the most popular lisp variant is Clojure.

Really?

bhalp15y ago

Great post

itsjztOP5y ago

Thanks

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

45 comments

eggy5y ago

piinbinary5y ago

And Prolog and Erlang to round things out.

eggy5y ago

jetti5y ago

I'm curious as to what you use J for. I know very little about the array-oriented languages and what domain they specialize in.

eggy5y ago

mamp5y ago

Good article. I’ve been fortunate to try them all, even SmallTalk when it was released for the Mac in the 80’s. Lots of code in Lisp and C. Not as much in Haskell.

My favourite so far are the ML family and F# in particular. The only language(s) I regret not learning earlier. Try F# or OCaml if you haven’t already.

erk__5y ago

My university recently put a package manager for SML up on its GitHub page. So there is still a chance for a comeback https://github.com/diku-dk/smlpkg

codr75y ago

Agree, and I've written substantial amounts of code in all of them; though I strongly prefer Common Lisp to Clojure unless already chained to the JVM.

Besides Prolog & APL, I would add Forth to the list.

MaxBarraclough5y ago

What do you make of Joy, Forth's functional cousin?

codr75y ago

Never did find the motivation to dive into Joy. I did write a lot of Haskell though, and it left a slightly sour taste.

I feel the same about statically typed functional programming as about Rust, it's a nice theory but in practice you end up squeezing problems into weird shapes to keep the language happy.

dbcurtis5y ago

Is Joy getting any active development? The only resources I could find with a quick search seem to be almost 20 years old.

1 more reply

idsout5y ago

I really enjoyed the book, Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks and regularly recommend that to people looking to expand their arsenal.

itsjztOP5y ago

+1 seven language, seven database, seven concurrency models all are great books

throw513195y ago

Is the original 7 languages worth reading?

JoelMcCracken5y ago

At this point I think the most interesting thing in smalltalk is not the OO aspects, but the integrated VM/image. Hacking around in smalltalk is such an incredible difference.

itsjztOP5y ago

Yeah

navdb5y ago

Try Nim too: https://onlinetechinfo.com/pros-and-cons-of-nim

exdsq5y ago

If I had to come up with 4 languages I'd suggest C, Idris, Lisp, and Prolog.

myth_drannon5y ago

You need to be very familiar with Haskell to tackle Idris.

ska805y ago

Actually no. Familiarity with Haskell can actually make learning Idris more difficult :). It is better if you start from scratch when learning Idris.

exdsq5y ago

There are some pretty good tutorials on Idris which cover just enough Haskell to get you started but yes, maybe it's too much in one go. Dependent Types though <3

vmchale5y ago

C and Lisp are pretty well-known!

I'd shill APL/J/etc.

ectoplasmaboiii5y ago

I would also shill one of the APL derivatives. I've gone from a happy Python dev to a die hard k/q guy very quickly. These languages completely change the way you approach a problem.

It's just a shame that q isn't free for commerical use (though it's free for personal use) and there aren't many jobs outside of finance.

eggy5y ago

itsjztOP5y ago

They are certainly very well known still in my experience I find a lot of people who haven't done C or any lisp before specially people who arent coming from CS backgroud

empath755y ago

They may be well known but a lot of people have never tried them.

channel_t5y ago

While definitely not the same, it seems somewhat misinformed to put Lisp and Haskell on 2 different corners.

em-bee5y ago

Smaug1235y ago

The usual four corners I give as my examples are Haskell, C, Lisp, SQL. (That is, I usually replace the author's Smalltalk with SQL.)

I then go further and describe languages as linear combinations of these: Python as C minus Haskell plus Lisp; Mathematica as Lisp plus SQL; F# as (Haskell plus C)/2.

jheriko5y ago

thats 2 corners...

kgwxd5y ago

I'd add a corner and include 6502 assembly. It's so fun, I think Atari 2600 specifically adds some more intimacy with the hardware compared to other classic systems, but they're all fun to learn.

bluedays5y ago

Is lisp considered a functional language? I thought it more imperative

itsjztOP5y ago

Paradigm Multi-paradigm: functional, procedural, reflective, meta

Actually it is both

fnordsensei5y ago

Though Clojure in particular probably leans heavily to the functional side.

non-entity5y ago

I still want to try smalltalk, just waiting on an idea where it makes sense to use it.

itsjztOP5y ago

You can try it in backend server for your pet peojects.

jancsika5y ago

If a mad scientist removed all the outermost parentheses in the clojure example and made it work the same as the current example in the article, what bad things would happen as a result?

itsjztOP5y ago

You might discover ruby

smlckz5y ago

You should try Tcl.

brutt5y ago

C + Haskel = Rust.

smlckz5y ago

I think, C++ U OCaml ===> Rust.

Do you know about any language with as strong or stronger borrow checker than that of Rust?

smlckz5y ago

>> Currently the most popular lisp variant is Clojure.

Really?

bhalp15y ago

Great post

itsjztOP5y ago

Thanks

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