Jan 22 2008
Pragmatic Timeline
So, according to the Pragmatic Programmers you should learn a new language every year (two? I don’t remember for sure.)
Last year I specifically ignored this rule, and instead opted to learn Python more. I watched some Google Videos, read some books, spent more time looking at other people’s code, and generally didn’t gloss over the details that I had in the past. I dove deeper into the language, and am a better Python programmer this year than I was last year.
Which brings us to 2008. My side-learning-project time has been cut back by the glorious birth of the inheritor to the vast Lion-Empire I’ve built, Mr. William Christopher McAvoy. I’ve been paring down projects like a madman. Plus, my day job became tremendously satisfying, which always helps remove the need to do stuff on the side. That said, what little time I do have is currently taken up with tweaking old web projects, helping a friend with a new site, and helping (however small-ly) with Pycon.
Other than the constant old project tweaking, my schedule is relatively clear starting in mid-March. Which got me thinking about maybe learning a new language. I talk about this an awful lot, and rarely follow through, but it can’t hurt to talk about it again, right? I’m thinking it should be one that has little practical purpose, other than a joyous exploration of all things computer. So, something like Lisp, Scheme, Lua, Erlang, Haskell, or Lisp. Notice I said Lisp twice, Lisp is on the short-list.
I’ve posted these sorts of posts before, they usually go nowhere, so take this all with a heaping tablespoon of salt. Sometimes, I’m all talk…no action. We’ll see how this works out.
And really, as I sit here and think, I haven’t written a Tastebud article in ages, just bought an Arduino in the hopes I’d build something cool with all these wires and capacitors I own, and I recently committed to a new writing project that I’ll talk about later. So, really, maybe I don’t have time. Whatever I do, there will be extra points for a language I can learn on the train. As that’s about the only time I’ll really have to do any significant reading. Seriously though, I probably will just stick with what I know, and put any new creative energy I can muster into some of these other projects I’ve been messing around with.
Oh, and I like to play Eve, and got Mass Effect for Christmas. Two total nerd-time-sinks.
Hey, good idea about reading other people’s code–I need to do that more myself, as I currently only really do it when I need to figure out why some open-source library that I’m using isn’t working the way I expect it to.
I think you told me that you were going to go with Scheme, but I wanted to throw another language out there for you: Inform 7. For one thing, the language itself is pretty fascinating–totally unlike earlier versions of Inform, if you’re familiar with them–and also, the author of the documentation, Graham Nelson, is a really good writer, which makes learning the language even more interesting.
Also, you can make text-based bee simulations with it.