Bjarne Stroustrup: The 5 Programming Languages You Need to Know

"Nobody should call themselves a professional if they only knew one language."

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• bigthink
• Bjarne
• Stroustrup
• Programming
• C++

[Cristoviolanalgonas1]

@Cobac

I had to learn Arithmetic, Algebra,Analytic Geometry, and Calculus all by my self.

It was extremely difficult because I had no one to ask questions when I didn't understand a concept. It took me years! I understand Mathematics at a very high level, I have even made

a couple of discoveries that perhaps one day I'll share with the world.

I tell you this because I want you to understand that you are not stupid, you just need to work harder.

p.s. Solo trabajen duro!

[flashdim]

His neck muscles are fascinating.

[heroijapa]

PHP/Javascript (web, almost all server runs PHP unlike Java)

C/C++ (stuff that runs inumerous calc per seconds like games)

Assembler (For os and some function optimizations)

People don't like assembler, they just buy new hardware, i think it is right when your applications runs in a single client and the improvement costs is higher than buying hardware, but imagine something like photoshop, millions of persons use it daily, that is where assembler optimization comes.

[Darkheart98765]

@stinky472 I agree... but we already know why all this, right?? it's a script language, not one of those like C++!! but still i like it too!

[stinky472]

@someman7 One of my favorite applications was Mirai, implemented in lisp. As for functions, I think it's quite interesting that defun is itself a function defining a function. I think the syntax throws some developers off though, like (< x y) instead of x < y (prefix notation for things that would be infix expressions in many other languages).

[someman7]

@stinky472 i'm not sure what you mean about lisp. I like it for its syntax ;-) And uniformity I guess derives there from. Any lisp's functions or applications of lisp to illustrate the rest?

[stinky472]

@someman7 I think so.. it is a shame how a lot of developers think they're fluent in a lot of languages because they know both Java *and* C#! :-D And I think it's sad that a lot of the new generation has forgotten about the beauty of languages like LISP (beyond the immediate syntax: its uniformity and consistency and flexibility). It's a problem with the industry, I think, and the nature of the jobs today.

[someman7]

@stinky472 I guess.. On the other hand, if schools and people weren't be pushing for these awful languages just because they're established, maybe we'd have more companies like Twitter that uses Scala, or Github that uses Ruby and Erlang. Maybe being a programmer would be more exciting then, and variable paradigms would breathe different new ideas into the industry (like functional programming did for Google with their Map-Reduce).

[stinky472]

@someman7 I don't think he's narrow-minded necessarily but focusing on what would get people jobs today. As a language designer he's obviously going to be studying languages as exotic as Prolog or Haskell and clearly knows a thing or two about Fortran and COBOL and even Simula which he credits as a source of inspiration for C++. I do wish people would learn these other languages and paradigms though just to expand the way they think about expressing elegant solutions to problems.

[stinky472]

@Darkheart98765 I think Python's strength is more in its environment, available libraries and frameworks (Python modules). It's not really that strong from a strict language point of view (more limited support for closures, lambda expressions are not as general as anonymous function equivalents in other languages, to things as basic as lack of multiline comments which puts emphasis on the IDE to solve problems instead of the language). I still love it though.

[stinky472]

Agreed with Stroustrup on the main point that any professional should know (and not just in an LCD way) and have seriously worked in at least 5 languages, but I'm disappointed by his choices: Python, Java, C++, C#, C: all imperative languages. I'd really emphasize his latter point to really see what it's like to approach problems in completely different ways as with the case with functional languages (Lisp, Haskell, etc) or logical languages like Prolog.

[Casarzino]

I hate programming