Isn't this is just too much to ask from any single text.Sure, we all love to brag (in person or in public) about how much we 'know', but merely skimming over languages is just an exercise in futility(as opposed to understanding different paradigms and leveraging them in one's language of choice [for multiple paradigm languages] ) .
I agree with Bruce on his choices in Ruby, Scala and Erlang (as I am having varying experience in them), but inclusion of other languages like Io, Prolog, etc. is beyond me (and change this mix for just about everyone).
Today, don't we use domain specific languages if we want to address a 'niche' problem ?
To me, frankly speaking, this Bruce Tate's work is disappointing, unlike earlier books.
If you actually happen to have a look at the way the book is structured for each language you can find out that it gives a great starting point to start learning the language. And every language is supported by an example implementation.
So you learn the 7 languages and you have the freedom to pick any of the language you are impressed with and go deeper into it.
One thing I wanted to tell here is that- Its a greater challenge to write about 7 languages in a concise way in the form of a book and yet not sacrificing the quality of content.
Sumit Bisht wrote:Isn't this is just too much to ask from any single text.Sure, we all love to brag (in person or in public) about how much we 'know', but merely skimming over languages is just an exercise in futility(as opposed to understanding different paradigms and leveraging them in one's language of choice [for multiple paradigm languages] ) .
I agree with Bruce on his choices in Ruby, Scala and Erlang (as I am having varying experience in them), but inclusion of other languages like Io, Prolog, etc. is beyond me (and change this mix for just about everyone).
Today, don't we use domain specific languages if we want to address a 'niche' problem ?
To me, frankly speaking, this Bruce Tate's work is disappointing, unlike earlier books.
It's really not about learning a language end-to-end. It's about learning what makes each language unique. If you believe, as I do, that programming paradigms are likely to change soon because of the massively parallel hardware we're building, this will be an important skill. The alternative is to guess right when paradigms do change, or to learn each language cover-to-cover, which is an expensive proposition.
Thanks for your feedback, but I am quite happy with the result.
First rule of Kayak: When in doubt, paddle like Hell
0
