Don’t dis it until you’ve tried it. Many BASIC programmers don’t see the point of pointers (or, for the politically correct, references) or real data structures. Indeed, if you explain the things you can do with a linked list, they’ll show you how to emulate one in BASIC. In fact, although both languages are Turing-complete, and so can do the same things as the other, both have different mindsets because they make different things easy. Similarly, many C/Java programmers (such as yourself) don’t see the point of closures, functional programming, and dynamic programming. It is a different way of programming, and a different way of thinking about programming. Coming from a background of C, Java, and a little bit of Perl, it is unlikely you’ll be able to grasp the power that comes from being able to fundamentally modify your programming language to the task at hand.
There’s a big difference between having a hash table class (Java), and being able to integrate a hash table into the syntax of your language (dynamic, functional programming languages).
I’ll add that while Perl has much of the functionality of modern scripting languages, it has a very different mindset.
30 second getting started guide if you decide to pursue this: If you’re interested in what you gain, the best book is SICP by Abelson and Sussman. If you’re interested in using it, the best language is Ruby, and a good demo of it is Rails.
Peter - 2007-10-31 13:04:40
Bryan,
Don’t dis it until you’ve tried it. Many BASIC programmers don’t see the point of pointers (or, for the politically correct, references) or real data structures. Indeed, if you explain the things you can do with a linked list, they’ll show you how to emulate one in BASIC. In fact, although both languages are Turing-complete, and so can do the same things as the other, both have different mindsets because they make different things easy. Similarly, many C/Java programmers (such as yourself) don’t see the point of closures, functional programming, and dynamic programming. It is a different way of programming, and a different way of thinking about programming. Coming from a background of C, Java, and a little bit of Perl, it is unlikely you’ll be able to grasp the power that comes from being able to fundamentally modify your programming language to the task at hand.
There’s a big difference between having a hash table class (Java), and being able to integrate a hash table into the syntax of your language (dynamic, functional programming languages).
I’ll add that while Perl has much of the functionality of modern scripting languages, it has a very different mindset.
30 second getting started guide if you decide to pursue this: If you’re interested in what you gain, the best book is SICP by Abelson and Sussman. If you’re interested in using it, the best language is Ruby, and a good demo of it is Rails.