7 languages in 7 weeks

2011-08-03T06:00:00-07:00

Seven weeks ago, my mentor, Aimee Daniells, started a 7 languages in 7 weeks study group and I was lucky enough to get in it. I knew from he beginning that I was going to enjoy it, but it has been an amazing experience.

Personally, I have learned a lot. My programming background was not very wide, but it was enough to go through the first two weeks without any problem (Ruby and Io, or OO and Prototype languages). Those first two weeks were fun, although they were not a challenge. But then, on the third week, every thing changed.

It was Prolog week, and it was mind blowing! It made me change my approach to problem solving completely, and it also introduced me to one of the greatest concepts I have discovered in this adventure, pattern matching. I know it is not a new concept (obviously), but I did not study computer science at the University (I am a physician. Well, I was a physician) and my main programming experience was related to C++, Java, and Ruby, so it was new to me.

I really enjoyed Prolog, but then we jumped into Erlang (I had to skip the Scala week), and I fell in love (although I think it was a crush). The syntax is similar to the Prolog one but it is a functional language! Pattern matching, list comprehensions and concurrency made easy. It was incredible! I had a lot of fun doing the exercises. I liked it so much that I even led the Sunday meeting! At that moment I thought that Erlang was the coolest language in the book, but I was looking forward to do a little bit of Clojure.

Clojure was disappointed, but I think it was not the language fault. The book tries to introduce a lot of concepts and it makes that week a little bit overwhelming. But do not get me wrong, Clojure has some very nice things too (lazy evaluation is another new concept that I need to understand better). I think I did not understand the language (my fault). Anyway, I will come back to it at some point to it (probably while studying SICP).

And finally, we got to the last week language, Haskell. Wow! Do you remember my crush on Erlang? Well, I am in love with Haskell. If you want to learn functional programming (or just learn something beautiful) you have to try Haskell. It feels right. Pattern matching, lazy evaluation, partially applied functions, an awesome type system, monads. Beautiful. I am definitely going to do more Haskell, and I will tell you about it.

Last Sunday, the 7 languages in 7 weeks study group had its last meeting (at least related to the book :D). I want to thank Aimee for make this study group possible, and all of the students for make it a great experience. As Chris Ford said in twitter after our last meeting:

Thank you to the #7languages7weeks folks for improving and extending my ignorance.

We all have worked a lot to go through the 7 weeks, and it was worthed. Personally, I do not fear unknown language anymore, and I know I want to do more functional programming. It has been really awesome (A-WE-SO-ME), but it has also been too demanding. That is why I am going to slow down a little bit in august.

See you soon!

PS: Even though we have finished, #7languages7weeks has just begun. I encourage all of you to do it and tell us. You are going to have a lot of fun!

A new hope

2011-06-12T10:00:00-07:00

Let’s see how github blogs work!

I’ve been blogging for a long time (well, not that long) on Blogger. It was ok, and it served my purpose at that moment, but I think it is time to change.

I’m going to start blogging here, on Github, at least for now…

Since I don’t want to spend a lot of time right now with the css, the feed or the comments, I just copied Chris Parsons’ Github blog (Thank you, Chris). I promise I’ll change it in the future.

See you!