For quite some time now, I have become disillusioned with the whole of computer programming. I have always thought almost exactly this about my skills, but I have never come across another person who believed the same. I have never before posted to/. but I read it often. All languages are so similar that there is no reason to specialize. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to learn and read more about new and different languages. This is the reason that this Ruby language topic drew my attention. I have examined many different languages and found most to be missing something, I know not what. Ruby is no different. It smacks of other languages. I want something new and different.
First I learned BASIC, but this was basic, so I moved on. Then came HTML and now I have a web page floating around, but there was no real reason to go beyond that. School taught Pascal, so I learned that. Then came C++. That was interesting. OOP was new to me, so I read some books and tried some new things. College came and they put me in a class which asked of me a certain knowledge of Java that I didn't have. I met someone else who was in the same situation. I had some fears but I said that knowing C++ would make it easy. It did. He failed. I didn't understand why. I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe different languages are hard to learn. So, someone told me that Assembly was difficult and interesting. I read some more books. It was not all that unlike what I had been trying to do in my other programs. I like Assembly a lot more than some of the other languages that I know. Now, I cannot say that I have real world experience in any of these languages, only school and private learning. But, inasmuch as I can see, it would not be that hard.
Again, however, I was afraid. I went to my job one day and they said they needed some VB program fixed. I told them I would do it. But they looked at my resume and didn't see it on there. So, I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I shouldn't be able to fix something in a language that I have never really used before. Once the job was done, I realized that they were wrong.
Since then, I have been looking through the many people at my school for anyone who thought these same things. I couldn't find them. So, again, I thought I was wrong. Now I read this post, and my faith is renewed. This is honestly the first person I have ever seen who expressed anything that I have thought. I just wanted to say thank you, Dalroth, for that.
One of these days, maybe some new language talked about here will have some marverlously new way of doing things and I will be glad take some time out to learn it and use it. But for the moment, I guess I must be content to read what is here and learn all of these painfully similar languages. Does anyone out there know of any languages that are interesting and different? Please tell me about them. I am on the lookout constantly, but they all seem to be just like the next one. I guess I will just go back to reading my Assembly book. Sorry for my craziness, but I was excited enough to post for the first time, which means that I was probably not thinking in a manner fit for sharing. Here it is anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
First I learned BASIC, but this was basic, so I moved on. Then came HTML and now I have a web page floating around, but there was no real reason to go beyond that. School taught Pascal, so I learned that. Then came C++. That was interesting. OOP was new to me, so I read some books and tried some new things. College came and they put me in a class which asked of me a certain knowledge of Java that I didn't have. I met someone else who was in the same situation. I had some fears but I said that knowing C++ would make it easy. It did. He failed. I didn't understand why. I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe different languages are hard to learn. So, someone told me that Assembly was difficult and interesting. I read some more books. It was not all that unlike what I had been trying to do in my other programs. I like Assembly a lot more than some of the other languages that I know. Now, I cannot say that I have real world experience in any of these languages, only school and private learning. But, inasmuch as I can see, it would not be that hard.
Again, however, I was afraid. I went to my job one day and they said they needed some VB program fixed. I told them I would do it. But they looked at my resume and didn't see it on there. So, I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I shouldn't be able to fix something in a language that I have never really used before. Once the job was done, I realized that they were wrong.
Since then, I have been looking through the many people at my school for anyone who thought these same things. I couldn't find them. So, again, I thought I was wrong. Now I read this post, and my faith is renewed. This is honestly the first person I have ever seen who expressed anything that I have thought. I just wanted to say thank you, Dalroth, for that.
One of these days, maybe some new language talked about here will have some marverlously new way of doing things and I will be glad take some time out to learn it and use it. But for the moment, I guess I must be content to read what is here and learn all of these painfully similar languages. Does anyone out there know of any languages that are interesting and different? Please tell me about them. I am on the lookout constantly, but they all seem to be just like the next one. I guess I will just go back to reading my Assembly book. Sorry for my craziness, but I was excited enough to post for the first time, which means that I was probably not thinking in a manner fit for sharing. Here it is anyway.