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The semicolon wars by Bryan Hayes, reviewed.

I'm not an expert progammer, but I've been working with differnet programming languages for about 3 years now. I'm still a newcomer to this whole new world of opportunities with thechnology and programming... I don't think that the fact that I'm slim matters (a-ha) , since I think I've learned a lot in this past years.

The point of view presented by Bryan Hayes is really interesting, and appealing. Starting out the course with a "let's go LISP!" seems like a good reading. But I've come across another good reading: "How to Choose a Programming Language: don't" and you can read it here.

As I have said before, I'm not yet an expert in the languages in which I feel the most proeficcient, but as one of my professors once told us: A specific requierment requieres an specific technology, and not the other way around. Since thinking about Technology setting us new requierements doesn't always make sense, since it may not be what you need in this particular moment. Yes, the trend sets the standard for the industry to go towards a goal, but that doesn't mean that we need an "smart fridge" right now, to make an example. Take this review by Elizabeth -although not entirely right - it has some strong points. Generally speaking Elizabeth's post is about why the internet of things (IOT) will eventually crash. The example she takes is the smart fridge. It takes into consideration some points about why it is a bad idea to shorten the lifespan of a fridge, from 14 years to maybe 7 years (think about the planet, dude!).

Having said this, let's take into consideration what we want to do before choosing how to do it. Yes, there are amazing trends out there, IOT, BigData, multinucleus programming... Python, Curl and Links, but we must choose the best suited solution to each given problem.

Generally speaking, I'm really keen on Java because it seems to me that is flexible. I'm also keen on SQL because on the readability that it offers. I like other languages like Swift and Python for this same reason. But I most say that one of the languages that I have liked learning the most is C because it seems powerful. As for my first class using Clojure to take a look at new solutions, it seems to me as a powerful language too. So LISP, please don't dissapoint me!


Diego.




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