Greg Lorriman wrote:
Somehow your reply hasn't rendered in Outlook Express, something I've not
personally seen before. It could just be the notorious OE, but I thought I
would mention it in case your mailer needs a tweak.
JFTR, it's exactly the same with 40tude Dialog. Could this be caused by
the Mail-to-news gateway?
Markus
Gavin Kistner wrote:
However, despite my own love of JavaScript, it ain't pretty in three regards:
1) There's no standalone interpreter (that I know of, and certainly not part of any 'official' distribution), which leaves you at the mercy of WSH or some sort of web-based interpreter[1].
<URL:http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/>
mathew
--
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~meta/>
WE HAVE TACOS
I hope to recieve replies to my questions, and I value other persons
subjective experience of "enjoyment", as asked for in my original post.
Thankyou for your effort at replying to my original post.
"Devin Mullins" <twifkak@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:432E1A27.4060002@comcast.net...
Greg,
What languages you deem "enjoyable" is very much a personal choice, and
one determined only through exploration and experimentation. It sounds
like you've explored -- you seem to have a decent list of languages of
which you're aware. Now you have to do the second part -- experiment with
them.That's why I didn't answer your question directly. Rather, I latched onto
the only context-independent criterion of yours that I found --
"not imperative" -- and gave you a list of non-imperative languages. For
me, Ruby's been the most fun language I've run into. 'swhy I'm here. BASIC
was fun back in the day. But YMMV.Yes, my post included humor. Possibly, my sense of humor is different from
yours.APL, Eiffel, Erlang, Haskell, Io, Joy, Lisp, Lua, Mathematica, Mozart/Oz,
OCaml, Prolog, REXX, Scala, Scheme, Self, and Smalltalk are all the
legitimate, 'alternative' languages that I recognize (by name only, for
the most part) from that wiki page, so maybe that makes them more popular.
Now get to Googlin'.? I can't believe my eyes.
What makes you question them? APL? Check extremeprogramming@yahoogroups.
There's a guy there who swears by the language.Can someone tell me if I am talking to a troll?
If by "troll" you mean, "just writing to see what kind of reaction I can
get out of you," then, no. If by "troll," you mean, "guy who doesn't type
anything of substance," then you've got yourself a matter of opinion,
there, and mine would probably be different from yours. Historically, at
least, ruby-talk seems to have a opinion of me that lies somewhere between
neutral and positive.Devin
Greg Lorriman wrote:
"Devin Mullins" <twifkak@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:432DEC60.7060601@comcast.net...There's plenty of places you can find recommendations for languages.
hmmm. I didn't ask for other places for recommendations for other
languages. I have already visited many places; I am surprised you did not
infer this from my post.I posted in the hope of personal opinions of Ruby programmers
specifically, since they bring a more pertinant spirit to my quest
(particularly enjoyableness).- this mailing list (the archives will have references to all the ones
you meantion, plus other ones such as Io, and D, and boo, and Groovy - of
which Io is the only one you might call "far out" - and, oh yeah,
Smalltalk)Seems like you did and didn't read my post at the same time. Very strange.
Here's two languages you're not likely to find immediately. Presented for
no apparent reason.....I prefer reasons.
1. Satan Comes to Dinner in E -- I haven't actually read this paper,
but it seems topical, so maybe somebody else will, and provide us a book
report.
2. The Unlambda Programming Language -- The purest,
simplest programming language ever, and it's functional, to boot. Smart
combination of a few simple constructs allows for a whole world of
flexibility.sounds kinda interesting. But is it enjoyable? Is it practical? I was
careful to list what I am looking for quite prominently.Have fun.
I am trying.
Devin
APL, Eiffel, Erlang, Haskell, Io, Joy, Lisp, Lua, Mathematica, Mozart/Oz,
OCaml, Prolog, REXX, Scala, Scheme, Self, and Smalltalk are all the
legitimate, 'alternative' languages that I recognize (by name only, for
the most part) from that wiki page, so maybe that makes them more
popular. Now get to Googlin'.? I can't believe my eyes.
Can someone tell me if I am talking to a troll?
The intersection of practical and interesting may be quite small.
....and therefore more difficult to find. And so one asks questions....
But if you are really looking for something that helps you think in a
different direction, yet isn't merely academic or weird-for-weirdness
sake, try a functional language such as Haskell.
Is this recommendation from experience? I am really looking for informed
opinions, particularly as enjoyment of a language tends not to be vicarious.
Or consider OCaml; some folks here were discussing ways of writing binary
Ruby extensions in OCaml as opposed to C which seemed quite interesting.
Yes, but why OCaml? Is it enjoyable? Learning curve...etc.., do you actually
have experience of it?
Lisp, Haskell, and Ocaml are floating in the back of my own mind as
candidates for next language to learn. Lisp has the upper hand so far,
because, well, it's *Lisp*.
That does seem like a rather self-referential reason. I would probably not
choose Lisp on this particular recommendation.
And there are lots of good, free resources for it.
Also for many other languages.
the most part) from that wiki page, so maybe that makes them more
popular. Now get to Googlin'.? I can't believe my eyes.
Can someone tell me if I am talking to a troll?
Well, they do exist and occasionally appear on this list. I suggest that,
before you think someone a troll, try to be generous and just assume the
poster is not a native speaker of English, and may have only skimmed your
original post, and really means well but doesn't always come off well in
plain text.
My response, IMO, was quite constrained.
Greg
James Britt wrote:
Lisp, Haskell, and Ocaml are floating in the back of my own mind as
candidates for next language to learn. Lisp has the upper hand so far,
because, well, it's *Lisp*. And there are lots of good, free resources
for it.
I'm starting on Haskell, as time permits. Haskell has syntax (Lisp doesn't)
and classes and type declarations. Functional programming is a different
paradigm, powerful, more directly mathematical. And you can bring some of it
back to Ruby.
Of course, there's also COBOL, which may be the most popular language in the
world by lines of code in production, but I think many would agree with my
claim that it is more painful than it is practical, and it is certainly
practical - there are COBOL jobs.
I just posted a paragraph on COBOL to comp.lang.ruby 
Cheers,
Dave
Yes it is. Thanks for the link.
James Edward Gray II
On Sep 19, 2005, at 10:07 AM, James Britt wrote:
James Edward Gray II wrote:
On Sep 18, 2005, at 11:32 PM, Kev Jackson wrote:
Lisp - got playing with this on a very boring business trip (there's an online interpreter somewhere, google for Lisp tutorial). Pros
- you can do pretty much anything with it (the tutorial leads you through writing your own mini-language for an old school adventure game, it was an eye-opener how easy it was).I'm interested in this tutorial, if you wouldn't mind providing a link. I did some Googling, but couldn't seem to come up with it.
Casting SPELs in Lisp
It is really well done.
So practical, they even wrote a book about it
http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
martin
Robbie Carlton <robbie.carlton@gmail.com> wrote:
I would wholeheartedly recomend lisp.
It's definitely alternative
It's more practical than you might have heard
Paul Graham wrote "On Lisp" which I have not completely gotten through
(only so much time in the day). He got the rights to make it available
on-line for free.
http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html
On 9/19/05, Robbie Carlton <robbie.carlton@gmail.com> wrote:
I would wholeheartedly recomend lisp.
It's definitely alternative
It's more practical than you might have heard
It's not as difficult as you seem to think. Common lisp is big, and yes car
cdr and cons are funny names for functions, but after that the majority of
function names are self explanatory almost to the point of verbosity, and
I've never met a programmer yet who couldn't remember the name of three
functions.
But the most important point is that lisp is fun.
Really really really fun.
So fun that it was the deciding factor in me becoming a professional
programmer. If it wasn't for lisp I would be doing something completely
different for a living right now (maybe teaching English).
I took up Ruby because Lisp is not supported on many servers yet (waiting
for arc), and ruby is as close as it gets in terms of flexibilty,
expressiveness and power. But there are some things that you can only do in
lisp.I'm paraphrasing/misquoting someone here (probably Paul Graham)
"Lisp turns the easy, boring and tedious task of solving your problem into
the difficult but interesting task of extending the language"This is the heart of whats amazing about lisp: macros (which are not like
macros in C, so don't even think it.) let you extend and redifine the
language however you want.
And don't worry about the parens, they quickly sink below your conscoius
awareness.check out www.paulgraham.com <http://www.paulgraham.com> for extremely
interesting lisp advocacy from a man who is a millionaire(or at least very
rich) off the back of lisp.And I'm sorry to get so fanatical about another language in a ruby list. I
still love you ruby.On 9/19/05, James Edward Gray II <james@grayproductions.net> wrote:
>
> On Sep 18, 2005, at 11:32 PM, Kev Jackson wrote:
>
> > Lisp - got playing with this on a very boring business trip
> > (there's an online interpreter somewhere, google for Lisp
> > tutorial). Pros
> > - you can do pretty much anything with it (the tutorial leads
> > you through writing your own mini-language for an old school
> > adventure game, it was an eye-opener how easy it was).
>
> I'm interested in this tutorial, if you wouldn't mind providing a
> link. I did some Googling, but couldn't seem to come up with it.
>
> James Edward Gray II
>
>
>
James Britt wrote:
Someone suggested JavaScript; not a bad idea, though probably not different enough from Ruby to really stretch your brain. But, if practical is a major factor, consider jscript.net. You can use Microsoft's version of ECMASscript to write .Net code. (I *think* there is a jscript.net compilier for mono, but I'm not sure.)
I've been contributing to it. Basically, it's getting ready for real world use and can run quite a few parts of Mozilla's ECMAScript test suite. The things Microsoft introduced in JS.NET (static typing, using CLR methods) are not yet implemented, but making the important ones work is a priority right now.
I would recommend Slate
http://slate.tunes.org/
It features:
+ Smalltalk like syntax (so easy to adapt for Ruby guy)
+ Multipledispatch
+ Prototype base OO.
So In learning Slate you will get two new Idea (Multipledispatch and
Prototype base programming)
I think the idea is nice to learn.
In functional way, may be you would like to try Haskell.
BTW, I'm learning Lisp for myself.
So may be you will be insterested.
A couple things I like in CommonLisp over Ruby is MultiDispatch and
Condition System.
Greg Lorriman wrote:
The intersection of practical and interesting may be quite small.
....and therefore more difficult to find. And so one asks questions....
Have you tried the pragprog list? I believe many list members gather 'round for Language of the Year study sessions. And there have been many discussions exactly like this one.
But if you are really looking for something that helps you think in a different direction, yet isn't merely academic or weird-for-weirdness sake, try a functional language such as Haskell.
Is this recommendation from experience? I am really looking for informed
opinions, particularly as enjoyment of a language tends not to be vicarious.
It is based on comments I've read from others in my own perusal for a Next Language.
Still, even if I *had* learned Haskell, you'd be getting an opinion from someone you've never met and know next to nothing about, and whose ideas of enjoyment may be peculiar.
If you get 10 people saying, "I've not used it but I've heard good things", that may be more valuable than one person swearing by it from personal use.
After all, I say nice things about Visual Basic.
...
Lisp, Haskell, and Ocaml are floating in the back of my own mind as candidates for next language to learn. Lisp has the upper hand so far, because, well, it's *Lisp*.
That does seem like a rather self-referential reason. I would probably not
choose Lisp on this particular recommendation.
Still, A recursive recommendation for Lisp does seem appropriate.
And there are lots of good, free resources for it.
Also for many other languages.
The best idea may be to avail yourself of some of those resources and just try stuff out. Pick stuff at random.
James
OCaml was required for my Programming Languages class back in college. So,
from first hand experience, I can say it's fun (perhaps the most fun I'd had
programming, until learning Ruby ). A lot of other people in this class
did not share that opinion, but they're generally not the kinds of people
who learn a (programming) language for fun.
The learning curve is going to be the much same as with Haskell, as it's
functional (although not purely). You will have to learn to solve problems
in different ways than you are probably used to, but isn't that the point?
Rob
On 9/18/05, Greg Lorriman <bogus@bogus.com> wrote:
Yes, but why OCaml? Is it enjoyable? Learning curve...etc.., do you
actually
have experience of it?
I would echo Robbie's enthusiasm for Lisp, and Martin's recommendation
of _Practical Common Lisp_. My Common Lisp and Scheme experience is
limited to small exercises in my spare time, but I would like to do a
big project in it some day. What fascinates me most about Lisp is the
ability to extend the language using macros. Many people criticize the
syntax of Lisp, with all of its parantheses. But the reason Lisp is
done this way is so that code is expressed in a data structure that
can be easily manipulated by Lisp, which the key to its extensibility.
If you through out the syntax of Lisp, you lose this powerful
capability. All that being said, my next personal project will
probably be in Ruby because I want to do a web application, and Rails
is too cool.
The most fun I've had programming in a professional environment was
using Smalltalk. Back then I used ParcPlace Visualworks, but now I
would recommend the Squeak implementation, which is open source. It
rates high on practicality, with strong Internet protocol and
multi-media support. From a language perspective, for someone who
knows Ruby, it is not as alternative as something like Lisp, Haskell,
or OCamel, because Ruby borrowed a lot of aspects of Smalltalk. The
main thing you will get from Smalltalk over Ruby is that it has an
even more interactive environment, where everything is at your
fingertips. Squeak does have a very alternative GUI toolkit, and an
active community of users.
The most fun I had programming in college was doing a project in
Prolog. Prolog rates very high in the alternative criteria. In Prolog
(short for Programming in Logic) your program consists of a series of
"facts" and "rules", and your program executes by running an inference
engine that attempts to "prove" a given statement based on the list of
facts and rules. Unfortunately, Prolog has not proven to be a good
general-purpose language, so it doesn't rate too high on the
practicality criteria.
Whatever you pick, I hope you enjoy yourself!
Greg
On 9/19/05, Martin DeMello <martindemello@yahoo.com> wrote:
Robbie Carlton <robbie.carlton@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would wholeheartedly recomend lisp.
> It's definitely alternative
> It's more practical than you might have heardSo practical, they even wrote a book about it
martin
That's it. I'm off this list. First the DRM'd PDF discussion, now somebody
brings up COBOL. If I'm going down, I'm going down screamin...
Visual Basic rocks! SQL is for toads! Long live binary files! All your base
are belong to us! Bush is the mastermind behind hurricane Katrina's coverup!
There *was* a guy on the grassy knoll! Windows Vista will squash linux!
Okay, got that off my chest. Sorry, it's Friday. Just trying to bring a
smile, don't flame me too bad!
On 9/18/05, Dave Burt <dave@burt.id.au> wrote:
James Britt wrote:
> Lisp, Haskell, and Ocaml are floating in the back of my own mind as
> candidates for next language to learn. Lisp has the upper hand so far,
> because, well, it's *Lisp*. And there are lots of good, free resources
> for it.I'm starting on Haskell, as time permits. Haskell has syntax (Lisp
doesn't)
and classes and type declarations. Functional programming is a different
paradigm, powerful, more directly mathematical. And you can bring some of
it
back to Ruby.Of course, there's also COBOL, which may be the most popular language in
the
world by lines of code in production, but I think many would agree with my
claim that it is more painful than it is practical, and it is certainly
practical - there are COBOL jobs.I just posted a paragraph on COBOL to comp.lang.ruby
Cheers,
Dave
--
Brock Weaver
brockweaver@gmail.com
/* you are not expected to understand this */
"James Britt" <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote in message
news:432E4A46.90508@neurogami.com...
Greg Lorriman wrote:
The intersection of practical and interesting may be quite small.
....and therefore more difficult to find. And so one asks questions....
Have you tried the pragprog list? I believe many list members gather
'round for Language of the Year study sessions. And there have been many
discussions exactly like this one.
That's a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.
Is this recommendation from experience? I am really looking for informed
opinions, particularly as enjoyment of a language tends not to be
vicarious.It is based on comments I've read from others in my own perusal for a Next
Language.Still, even if I *had* learned Haskell, you'd be getting an opinion from
someone you've never met and know next to nothing about, and whose ideas
of enjoyment may be peculiar.
I wouldn't bother with usenet, or the internet for that matter, if these
were considerations which bothered me. he he.
If you get 10 people saying, "I've not used it but I've heard good
things", that may be more valuable than one person swearing by it from
personal use.
I personally consider that an opinion from experience is worth 100 without,
not having met the person not-withstanding. Ok, make that 1000 just to
really bash your 10 to 1!!!
After all, I say nice things about Visual Basic.
I don't know how to respond to that.
That does seem like a rather self-referential reason. I would probably
not
choose Lisp on this particular recommendation.Still, A recursive recommendation for Lisp does seem appropriate.
I had a feeling that might be the case.
And there are lots of good, free resources for it.
Also for many other languages.
The best idea may be to avail yourself of some of those resources and just
try stuff out. Pick stuff at random.
True, I could, and maybe sometime I will, but before I waste alot of time
doing that I would rather gather as many informed opinions, preferably
personal, as possible. I very much enjoy informed personal opinions, and
feel that they are valuable, especially when contrasted against each other.
For similar reasons I need plenty of charactererisation when I read a novel.
thanks,
Greg
Brock Weaver wrote:
That's it. I'm off this list. First the DRM'd PDF discussion, now somebody
brings up COBOL. If I'm going down, I'm going down screamin...Visual Basic rocks!
Actually ...
James
--
http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys