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I'm planning to learn one more language with my python.
Someone recommended to do Lisp or Clojure, but I don't think it's a
good idea(do you?)
So, I consider C# with ironpython or Java with Jython.
It's a hard choice...I like Visual studio(because my first lang is VB6
so I'm familiar with that)
but maybe java would be more useful out of windows.

what do you think?

Lisp and Clojure are functional languages. Learning one of those (or a
similar language) will help by providing you with a fairly different
perspective on how to approach programming problems. Personally I
think learning Lisp or Clojure is good advice.

However, if you're really adamant about going with Java or C# I'd
probably go with Java. Not only can you play around on multiple
platforms but should you decide to give Clojure a go in the future
it'll come in handy (Clojure runs on the JVM so you can make use of
Java libraries directly from it).


On Jun 9, 11:44*pm, Yesterday Paid <howmuchisto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm planning to learn one more language with my python.
> Someone recommended to do Lisp or Clojure, but I don't think it's a
> good idea(do you?)
> So, I consider C# with ironpython or Java with Jython.
> It's a hard choice...I like Visual studio(because my first lang is VB6
> so I'm familiar with that)
> but maybe java would be more useful out of windows.
>
> what do you think?

Yesterday Paid <> writes:
> I'm planning to learn one more language with my python.
> Someone recommended to do Lisp or Clojure, but I don't think it's a
> good idea(do you?)

Why do you want to do that?

First of all, why not stick with learning one language at a time? Get
familiar with one before moving on to the next.

Second, what is your goal in wanting to learn multiple languages? The
right advice to give you depends on what your goals are.

In my opinion (this is not a universally accepted notion), Python and
Clojure are at least spiritually similar to Lisp. So if you know one of
them, the other two should be easy. That might be good or bad depending
on your goals. Good because it means you get extra tools without a lot
of extra effort. Bad because you're learning something close to
something you already know, rather than something new and different.

I'd suggest C# after Python, out of languages in your list. Not because
C# is great or anything like that, but because it's different, so you
get exposed to more concepts. After C# you might try Haskell, which
will expand your horizons even further.

[becky_lewis <>]

> Lisp and Clojure are functional languages.

No, they're not.

But you can (and often will) do quite a bit of functional programming in
Lisp, as it lends itself quite naturally to that way of thinking.

But in (Common) Lisp you also have CLOS, which is a rather different way
to do object oriented programming. It will widen your horizon in more
than one way.

The advice to learn just one programming language at a time seems sound,
though. I would take it, if I were you.

--
* Harald Hanche-Olsen <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
-- Bertrand Russell

My mistake about Lisp being purely functional (I have very little
experience with common Lisp itself), though Clojure is. That doesn't
change my point, to which you appear to agree, Lisp and Clojure teach
folks a different way of approaching problems, which is always
useful

On Jun 10, 12:25*pm, Harald Hanche-Olsen <han...@math.ntnu.no> wrote:
> [becky_lewis <bex.le...@gmail.com>]
>
> > Lisp and Clojure are functional languages.
>
> No, they're not.
>
> But you can (and often will) do quite a bit of functional programming in
> Lisp, as it lends itself quite naturally to that way of thinking.
>
> But in (Common) Lisp you also have CLOS, which is a rather different way
> to do object oriented programming. It will widen your horizon in more
> than one way.
>
> The advice to learn just one programming language at a time seems sound,
> though. I would take it, if I were you.
>
> --
> * Harald Hanche-Olsen * * <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
> - It is undesirable to believe a proposition
> * when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
> * -- Bertrand Russell

On 10/06/12 00:44, Yesterday Paid wrote:
> I'm planning to learn one more language with my python.

Just my personal experience, but after passively learning many many
languages, I came to the conclusion that I (and I suppose many others)
am able to learn only one platform well. The point is that you are never
interested in learning *a language*, everybody who has at least some
touch with programming can learn most languages in one session in the
afternoon. But nobody is interested in you knowing a language, you need
to know the platform with all libraries, standards, style, and culture.
And *that* demands you focus on one language completely.

Yes, of course, you will know couple of other languages and be able to
write a thing in it (everybody needs to know a bit of JavaScript these
days, and if you are on Unix/Linux,Mac OS X, you need to know a bit of
shell scripting), but that's different from "Zen & Writing" (that's my
personal homage to recently deceased Ray Bradbury and his essay
http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=wi...n%3A1877741094). The
language in which you write those 100 lines of code per day (that's my
rough estimate of an equivalent for Bradbury's daily portion of prose to
be written) should be IMHO only the one.

I think the similarity with story writing makes a lot of sense. Yes,
many people speak and write more than one language (me included, English
is not my first language), but that's not the same as writing stories
professionally. At the moment, I can think only about one successful
famous writer how changed his main language (Kundera), but I don't
recall ATM any writer who would be writing in multiple languages at one
time. (yes, switches between main programming languages is more
possible, because programming languages are endlessly less complicated
than natural ones)

Just my 0.02CZK

Matěj

On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Matej Cepl <> wrote:
> Just my personal experience, but after passively learning many many
> languages, I came to the conclusion that I (and I suppose many others) am
> able to learn only one platform well. The point is that you are never
> interested in learning *a language*, everybody who has at least some touch
> with programming can learn most languages in one session in the afternoon.
> But nobody is interested in you knowing a language, you need to know the
> platform with all libraries, standards, style, and culture. And *that*
> demands you focus on one language completely.

Currently, I'm working professionally in Pike, C++, bash, PHP, and
Javascript, but only one platform: Unix. Everything's done to our own
internal philosophy, which mostly aligns with the Unix notion of
building small tools that link together (rather than monoliths for
entire tasks). Learning and managing multiple languages isn't itself a
problem, though I do recommend learning just one at a time until you
stop considering yourself a novice (master a half-dozen languages or
so, that's a start).

ChrisA

Matej Cepl <> writes:
> The point is that you are never interested in learning *a language*,
> everybody who has at least some touch with programming can learn most
> languages in one session in the afternoon.

Really, that's only if the new language is pretty much the same as the
old ones, in which case you haven't really learned much of anything.
Languages that use interesting new concepts are challenges in their own
right.

Here is an interesting exercise for statically typed languages,
unsuitable for Python but not too hard in Haskell:

http://blog.tmorris.net/understandin...l-programming/

It doesn't require the use of any libraries, standards, style, or
culture. I can tell you as a fairly strong Python programemr who got
interested in Haskell a few years ago, it took me much longer than an
afternoon to get to the point of being able to solve a problem like the
above. It required absorbing new concepts that Python simply does not
contain. But it gave me the ability to do things I couldn't do before.
That's a main reason studying new languages is challenging and
worthwhile.

On 10/06/12 18:32, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Really, that's only if the new language is pretty much the same as the
> old ones, in which case you haven't really learned much of anything.
> Languages that use interesting new concepts are challenges in their own
> right.

Well, I could at least passively read many languages (starting with
Pascal, C, and unsuccessful attempt to learn Prolog, so even statically
typed languages are not that mysterious to me), so learning new ones is
not that problem. And yes, to be completely honest, functional languages
are my weakest part (although I have used Emacs for some time, I still
haven't learned writing in any Lisp properly).

Matěj

Matej Cepl <> writes:
> Well, I could at least passively read many languages (starting with
> Pascal, C, and unsuccessful attempt to learn Prolog, so even
> statically typed languages are not that mysterious to me),

I wouldn't count Pascal or C as statically typed in any interesting
way. C++ (template generics), ML, or Haskell would be more meaningful.
Prolog is worth spending more time on, and it's on my own list.

> so learning new ones is not that problem. And yes, to be completely
> honest, functional languages are my weakest part (although I have used
> Emacs for some time, I still haven't learned writing in any Lisp
> properly).

You might start with Abelson and Sussman's classic book:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp