> On Nov 28, 2017, at 1:59 PM, Andrew Dabrowski <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I've come to feel that all programming languages are ugly compromises that
> are about equally good/bad at solving practical problems, and the "best"
> language is just the one you know the best.
I think this is more true than false. Most of the people I look up to are
monolingual. I know many languages and it hasn't made me more productive, just
given me more decision paralysis. It seems like there are always a few frogs
you have to eat to get anything real done, and knowing more tools helps you
procrastinate trying to figure out if you can get away without eating any.
I don't think this makes all languages ugly compromises, but it does mean that
every useful program is going to contain some code that could be more elegantly
stated in another language. I would always rather be parsing with Prolog, but
once I have to do some math, Prolog gets onerous. But most programs seem to
have to do some parsing and some math, so… pick your poison.
It's like this in natural language too. English is very bad at expressing joint
custody, for instance: "I drove mine and my wife's car to the diner." English
speakers like us almost never include that kind of detail because it comes out
so awkwardly, so we omit the information ("I drove [our/the] car to the diner")
or include it periphrastically ("I drove that car my wife and I own to the
diner" or "That car my wife and I own, I drove it to the diner"). However, most
users of natural language would not weigh such considerations strongly in
deciding whether to use English or another language for a given utterance. :)
> Is there any project in the J repos that demonstrates the strength of J, as
> opposed to just showing that it's at least as good as other languages? Any
> project that would have been significantly harder to complete with say
> Python? ... Does J have any killer advantage, even in just one aspect of
> programming?
I'm not a huge Paul Graham guy, but have you seen his bit about Blub, the
made-up middle-of-the-road language?
"As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power
continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are
obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But
when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the
power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely
weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub,
but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for
him, because he thinks in Blub."
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html <http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html>
He goes on to argue rather unconvincingly that Lisp is therefore the most
powerful language and it constitutes a major business advantage. A questionable
conclusion, but I have found the above quote pretty illuminating over the
years. Somewhere or other, there is an essay or something from Gromov about how
important confusion is to real learning, an anecdote from when he first
encountered Grothendieck's algebraic geometry work and found it beautiful but
intensely confusing compared to the work it was competing with. (My
mathematician friend told me the story but I don't seem to have a link to
anything about it and couldn't find anything by googling, so it might be
apocryphal; I'll not attempt this trick a second time.)
> I don't know that I'll have the patience for that... I was hoping someone
> could talk me into studying J seriously
Forgive me if this comes across as too familiar, but I have some advice. Give
yourself permission. Permission to put it down if it's not interesting you
right now, or pick it up if it interests you but you don't understand why.
Permission to learn something that might turn out to be useless, or to fail at
learning and still believe in your intelligence. You have a restless mind and
that's OK. Maybe this is recreation. Nobody really can make you take it
seriously, all they can do is throw some seeds at you and hope they land in
fertile soil.
--
Daniel Lyons
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