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Seven Languages in Seven Weeks

July 19, 2013

A while ago, I was thinking about which programming language I wanted to learn next. At first I was doubting between Scala, Ruby or perhaps Clojure. But I couldn’t really make up my mind. So I decided to pick up Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. This way I was able to take a small bite from a couple different cakes in order to decide which flavor I liked the most.

The seven languages that are discussed  in this book are Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure and Haskell.

I really liked Ruby and it’s nice syntax as this programming language is not a complete stranger to me.

I had great hopes for Scala, but it kind of left me disappointed. While exploring the syntax of this academic newcomer, I had this constant nagging feeling that Scala reminded me too much of C++. Don’t get me wrong, I do like C++. But while C++ was intended to bridge the gap between procedural programming (C) and object-oriented programming, Scala does seem to bring the same kind of awkwardness as it tries to bridge the gap between object-oriented programming and functional programming. I still find it a really fascinating language to learn, but it kind of fell down in my personal ranking.

The big surprise for me was Erlang. Although it’s syntax has its quirks, this is a truly powerful and fascinating programming language that piqued my interest.

Clojure was kind of was I expected and brought back some fine memories from the small, entry-level Lisp programs I wrote back when I was in college.

While I was reading this book, I briefly jumped into some other programming languages as well. Go, D and yes, even Smalltalk are other programming languages that sparked my interest.

I very much enjoyed reading this book and had a lot of fun trying to do those small exercises at the end of each day. The only down-side now is that the list of programming languages that I want to take a closer look at basically doubled. Oh well, nothing that flipping a coin can’t handle.

I want to end this blog post with the question: What programming language are you learning at the moment?

Until next time.

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Jan Van Ryswyck

Thank you for visiting my blog. I’m a professional software developer since Y2K. A blogger since Y2K+5. Provider of training and coaching in XP practices. Curator of the Awesome Talks list. Past organizer of the European Virtual ALT.NET meetings. Thinking and learning about all kinds of technologies since forever.

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Thank you for visiting my website. I’m a professional software developer since Y2K. A blogger since Y2K+5. Author of Writing Maintainable Unit Tests. Provider of training and coaching in XP practices. Curator of the Awesome Talks list. Thinking and learning about all kinds of technologies since forever.

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