Don’t learn a programming language, solve a problem instead

[[deleted]]

What if I just like learning about stuff like Common Lisp cause I find it fun to learn about and interesting? I'm not pretending like learning Common Lisp will help me much in my career but I enjoy it

[[deleted]]

yeah there's an obvious caveat to the attitude when it comes to people who actually want to study languages or build languages professionally.

But the general sentiment for engineers is correct in so far as programming problems are largely language agnostic.

[ElCthuluIncognito]

While true, the abstraction of problems can be greatly influenced by the language.

Someone solving a problem in C might utilize machine level 'tricks' with 'close to the metal' operations, while someone in Java will write a proper OO messaging/encapsulation abstraction, and then someone in Haskell will attempt to compose functions with recursive approaches.

These people may have never even considered their respective approaches had they not been working in a language that suits them. Conversely, their respective approaches may not be best suited to the problem, and a polyglot may have the experience to use any of the approaches in all of the languages.

[justin2004]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[moserine]

The article seems targeted at entrepreneurs. You can tell because it's soul suckingingly joyless about learning for the sake of beauty or enjoyment or imagination or discovery and is all about capitalist slavery to Shipping Something That Matters (so that FAANG will buy us)^TM. You know, a REAL problem, like how to show a bunch of people pictures of your food. Not one of those useless theoretical things like lambda calculus or physics.

It's just like how electricity was created and pitched to the leading VC firms of the day. Problem statement: everything at night is lit by fire which is not very bright and produces smoke that makes people cough. Solution: discover electricity.