Re: thoughts on dynamic from a beginner's perspective
- From: pjb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:10:08 +0100
Jason <jason.lillywhite@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
I enjoyed all the discussion about dynamic vs. static and interpreted
vs. compiled. I see that there have been many posts on this topic.
I've learned a lot by reading these.
I want to mention a thought coming from a beginner. Unfortunately I am
starting late in life trying to learn to program. Fortran is daunting
for me and Visual Basic has been painful. These two languages seem to
be used a lot for beginners in my field of engineering and for good
reason.
Not really. It's only per accidents of history. (And also if we CS
people were a tad better on the meta-programming side, we could
implement translators to convert these relic^W legacy libraries to
better designed tools for engineers (well Common Lisp programmers did
implement a Fortran IV to Common Lisp translator (f2cl), that can be
said for them).
You can do great things with them. For my circumstances
however, Ruby is a language that helped me love programming. It
wouldn't have happened without it. It made me want to start learning
other languages - it gave me the confidence to journey onward. So at
least I have this to say about modern, dynamic languages - they can be
a great asset for beginners. I am not saying these languages are light-
weight and that I'm worthy to say I'm an expert. Let that be whatever
it is worth.
Ruby is not the worst programming language. (I just reproach it not
to be Common Lisp, or at least, to be too single-mindedly OO).
In anycase, if you can express yourself satisfactorily in Ruby, that's
what matters.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
.
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