The Semicolon Wars

This is an interesting article that aboard the topic of programming languages and the development of this “war” for having the most powerful, easiest, more useful, the best language. Here Brian Hayes exposes one of the truths that anyone spoke, but every programmer knows and is concern about, and the question that at least I’ve done for myself: Am I using the right programming language?

I haven’t use Clojure that much to affirm that is my favorite language, or if it’s even between the top 10, but at least has a different perspective, as is stated in the article. New perspectives always help for improving and that makes me wonder how far I can get using the functional Lisp’s evolution. 

One of my favorite part of this article is when the author says that your way of expressing anything is based on the language you’re thinking of, and going even further, I think that the language itself defines the way you think. This statement becomes even more tangible at the programming matters, just like a joke, if you have a reunion with 10 programmers that dominate 10 different languages, all of them will have a totally different idea for solving the same problem, even the simpler ones.

For me, the opinion of my mate Max Castillo is very realistic, at least in this part where he thinks it’s useful to have the variety of languages because of the practicality this can provide for creating of solving, but always having in mind that the idea of having that many languages are for improvement not for specializing. Some people develop programming languages for being specialized in some certain disciplines, but in a world like ours, being multiplatform, thinking on hybrids, a world that interacts constantly between every technology, the most variety of tools, the more effort we’ll need to do for communicating between them.

At least for me it’s useful to know that in 2006 there were at least 2,500 languages, but makes me wonder, what have happened with the last 12 years? How many options do I have now that I ignore? For me this article can be a way of getting myself out of my comfort zone, maybe I’m complicating my own life by using the tools that I’ve been using this far just for ignoring the hole programming world and I may not realize since now.

References:

- Hayes, B. (2006) The Semicolon Wars. American Scientist. Recovered from WEB at August 18th, 2018. http://webcem01.cem.itesm.mx:8005/s201813/tc2006/semicolon_wars.pdf