> 99.5% of programming consists of gluing together calls to library functions. All popular languages are equally good at this.
I'm not sure this is so true. I've glued stuff together in a bunch of languages, and some are easier than others. Particularly in how the package manager works. I'd say c++ throws the weirdest integration issues out of the ones I've used. Rust seems pleasant, nothing too odd thus far for me. Python, super easy so long as you got Anaconda for all the math stuff. JS/npm maybe too easy. Swift/Cocoapods smooth sailing.
But also the languages themselves can make it easier or harder to glue stuff together. If you need to play with pointers and allocators, there's more work to do.
> Weird languages aren't weird by accident. Not the good ones, at least.
No true Scotsman? I'm sure once a language gets more than the initial attention, it can end up a strange mess, just like anything that has a bunch of people tugging at it.
> So if you want to expand your concept of what programming can be, one way to do it is by learning weird languages. Pick a language that most programmers consider weird but whose median user is smart, and then focus on the differences between this language and the intersection of popular languages.
I think this is selection at work. Yes, I do consider some coders better than others. But often it's because the kind of person who is good at coding is often the kind who gets to the bottom of things, and part of that is cave diving in weird languages. Probably I rate people higher as coders just from telling me they know Haskell or Lisp, which I perhaps shouldn't (?). But it does appear to me like some of the sharper coders I've met have for some reason been down the Haskell cave, perhaps investigating something to do with the type system.
I'm not sure this is so true. I've glued stuff together in a bunch of languages, and some are easier than others. Particularly in how the package manager works. I'd say c++ throws the weirdest integration issues out of the ones I've used. Rust seems pleasant, nothing too odd thus far for me. Python, super easy so long as you got Anaconda for all the math stuff. JS/npm maybe too easy. Swift/Cocoapods smooth sailing.
But also the languages themselves can make it easier or harder to glue stuff together. If you need to play with pointers and allocators, there's more work to do.
> Weird languages aren't weird by accident. Not the good ones, at least.
No true Scotsman? I'm sure once a language gets more than the initial attention, it can end up a strange mess, just like anything that has a bunch of people tugging at it.
> So if you want to expand your concept of what programming can be, one way to do it is by learning weird languages. Pick a language that most programmers consider weird but whose median user is smart, and then focus on the differences between this language and the intersection of popular languages.
I think this is selection at work. Yes, I do consider some coders better than others. But often it's because the kind of person who is good at coding is often the kind who gets to the bottom of things, and part of that is cave diving in weird languages. Probably I rate people higher as coders just from telling me they know Haskell or Lisp, which I perhaps shouldn't (?). But it does appear to me like some of the sharper coders I've met have for some reason been down the Haskell cave, perhaps investigating something to do with the type system.