Language recommendations from ruby persons....

[Robbie Carlton]

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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=
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cdr and cons are funny names for functions, but after that the majority of=
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function names are self explanatory almost to the point of verbosity, and=
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I've never met a programmer yet who couldn't remember the name of three=20
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=20
programmer. If it wasn't for lisp I would be doing something completely=20
different for a living right now (maybe teaching English).
I took up Ruby because Lisp is not supported on many servers yet (waiting=
=20
for arc), and ruby is as close as it gets in terms of flexibilty,=20
expressiveness and power. But there are some things that you can only do in=
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lisp.

I'm paraphrasing/misquoting someone here (probably Paul Graham)

"Lisp turns the easy, boring and tedious task of solving your problem into=
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the difficult but interesting task of extending the language"

This is the heart of whats amazing about lisp: macros (which are not like=
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macros in C, so don't even think it.) let you extend and redifine the=20
language however you want.
And don't worry about the parens, they quickly sink below your conscoius=20
awareness.

check out www.paulgraham.com <http://www.paulgraham.com> for extremely=20
interesting lisp advocacy from a man who is a millionaire(or at least very=
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rich) off the back of lisp.

And I'm sorry to get so fanatical about another language in a ruby list. I=
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still love you ruby.

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On Sep 18, 2005, at 11:32 PM, Kev Jackson wrote:
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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.
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James Edward Gray II
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=20

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[Daryl Richter]

Dear sirs and madames,

I've thrown myself into ruby and I'm having a pleasant time.

Now I am looking to find another language to learn with three features, two
of which Ruby has, and I am looking for your words of advice and guidance.

The features I am looking for are

1)enjoyableness
2)practicalness
3)alternativeness

with a decent nod to

4)not so long a learning curve (hey, I'm from the TV generation; I need
instant kicks).

Ruby does the first two, but now I want to cruise into other dimensions, and
ruby isn't really weird and alternative enough.

I really would like something that makes me think in a very different
manner, and is excellent at solving a range of problems that imperative
languages are not too good at. I would like to be using it a lot for
real-world stuff, like I am Ruby and Delphi.

Smalltalk fits the bill on this point. It's image-orientation and
"objects all the way down" approach is very helpful in truly
understanding OO programming.

http://www.squeak.org/download/index.html
http://smalltalk.cincom.com/index.ssp
http://www.object-arts.com/Home.htm (Best Windows Smalltalk)

The book "Smalltalk-80: The Language" is a great companion:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&isbn=0201136880

[snip]

 

[James Britt]

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

http://www.lisperati.com/


It is really well done.

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

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Casting SPELs in Lisp

http://www.lisperati.com/


It is really well done.

Yes it is. Thanks for the link.

James Edward Gray II

 

[Martin DeMello]

I would wholeheartedly recomend lisp.
It's definitely alternative
It's more practical than you might have heard

So practical, they even wrote a book about it

http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

martin

 

[Rob Rypka]

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Yes, but why OCaml? Is it enjoyable? Learning curve...etc.., do you=20
actually
have experience of it?
=20

OCaml was required for my Programming Languages class back in college. So,=
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from first hand experience, I can say it's fun (perhaps the most fun I'd ha=
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programming, until learning Ruby ). A lot of other people in this class=
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did not share that opinion, but they're generally not the kinds of people=
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who learn a (programming) language for fun.

The learning curve is going to be the much same as with Haskell, as it's=20
functional (although not purely). You will have to learn to solve problems=
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in different ways than you are probably used to, but isn't that the point?

Rob

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[Stephen Veit]

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

 

[Greg Graham]

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

 

[Florian Groß]

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.

 

[joesb]

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.

 

[Markus Koenig]

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

 

[Brock Weaver]

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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!

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 m= y
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
(e-mail address removed)

/* you are not expected to understand this */

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[James Britt]

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 ...

http://rubyurl.com/0IM

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

 

[Mark Probert]

I really would like something that makes me think in a very different
manner, and is excellent at solving a range of problems that imperative
languages are not too good at. I would like to be using it a lot for
real-world stuff, like I am Ruby and Delphi.

Depending on your range of problems and platform:

J (www.jsoftware.com)
FORTH (check Google)

Both are more for bending your mind and professional enjoyment than
"get stuff from a database and show it on the screen". If that is
your "joy", then stick to Ruby and Delphi (both excellent choices, BTW).

Regards,

-mark.