Language of the Month

So, this year in 2016, I have a number of ambitious goals, two of which are related to this blog. The first goal is to write a blog post per week, which I've managed to do successfully thus far (although I'm often a bit off of my "publish every Monday morning" mark). The second is even more ambitious; so much so that I don't even know if I'll be able to keep with it the entire year.

The second goal is to try out a different programming language each month, and write about the experience. Through this, I hope to find new tools I can leverage (ex. R for its array of statistical computing functions), concepts I would like to bring back into other languages, and all around have some fun.

Each month will detail my experiences learning and using the language, including a program I wrote using it. The programs will be available in this Git repository.

This post will serve as a landing page for the various entries; as you can see, it's currently February, so I'm a little behind.

The Language Categories

Here are some of the language categories that I've meant to play with over the last few years:

Statistical Computing (R)

Two things I've wanted to get better at for a while are statistics and machine learning; not only does it seem that these skills will be important as a developer in the future, but you can also accomplish some really cool feats armed with this knowledge. R makes doing a lot of statistics and linear algebra calculations simple; that along with its visualization tools should make for a welcome addition to my programming toolbox!

UPDATE: Here is the post I wrote about R

Object Oriented Programming (Smalltalk)

Although a lot of language bear the description of "object-oriented", I feel that one of them stands above the rest: Smalltalk. With Smalltalk you're not just using a language; you're embracing an environment. It's one of those older languages that newer languages keeps stealing great ideas from, so naturally it makes my list.

UPDATE: Here is the post I wrote about Smalltalk.

Array-based Programming (APL, J, K)

I've never delved into the array-based APL or its descendants, but people tell me that as a programmer who enjoys writing Perl, APL would be right up my alley. ;) APL programs are frighteningly terse, but like most of the languages on this list, it has a small but dedicated following, so they must be doing something right.

Logic Programming (Prolog, Mercury, MiniKanren)

One of my professors in college once described writing Prolog as like having a butler: relaxing, because your butler concerns himself with the lower-level details on how to manage your household, but awkward, because he sees you get out of the shower when he comes to hand you your towel. I've done a bit of programming in Prolog before, and I think the analogy is pretty apt! It's definitely mind bending, which is exactly what I'm after. This time around, I owe it to myself to check out Art of Prolog, which contains some advanced Prolog techniques, and/or perhaps some of the other languages in the logic programming space.

Concatenative Programming (Factor, Forth, Postscript)

I've never gotten around to using concatenative (aka. stack-based) programming languages before; I don't think Lua's stack-based C API counts! Factor looks like it comes with a very sophisticated environment, but I don't want to quickly discount Forth or Postscript; Forth can be used for very low-level programming, and there's something appealing about writing a Postscript program and having its output directly affect my printer.

Lisp (Racket, Clojure, Common Lisp)

Even if you aren't a Lisper yourself, you have to admit there's something special about Lisp - something timeless. Learning a Lisp has been considered by many to be a rite of passage as a programmer. It has an extremely ardent following, and it represents the epitome of language flexibility. I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into a Lisp this year!

UPDATE: Here is the post I wrote about Racket

Rebol Family (Rebol, Red)

Rebol (and its descendent Red) stand in a class all their own; they're homoiconic like Smalltalk and Lisp, but they don't belong to either family. I'm excited to unlock the mysteries behind this family of languages.

Dependent Types (Idris, ATS, Agda)

I'll be frank - I'm not entirely clear on what dependent types are. It seems like it takes a rich type system like that of Haskell and enhances it further. That's what this whole goal is all about; learning about fascinating new paradigms!

Concurrent Programming (Elixir)

I should probably invest some time in checking out Erlang, but the buzz around the Ruby-like Elixir that runs on BEAM (the Erlang VM) is too hard to pass up. I don't know much about Elixir yet, but I aim to change that!

UPDATE: Here is the post I wrote about Elixir

I'm planning on covering one category per month, focusing on a single member of that category. I'll cover other languages in that category if I have time.

I hope you enjoy reading about my experiences as much as I enjoy experiencing them!

Posts Written to Date

Published on 2016-02-04