[morvita]

I've heard so many people say that Ruby is really easy to pick up and work with and for some reason I've had the exact opposite experience. I have tried to learn Ruby at least three or four times and I bounce off it every time. There are a bunch of other languages that I've learned and worked with effectively, but for some reason my brain just refuses to grok Ruby.

[throwawa14223]

That's word for word my experience with Go. I wonder if people are different enough that programming languages cannot be one sized fits all?

[johannes1234321]

Experience between people differs. Problems they want to focus on differ. The environment changes.

Maybe in hundred years or so software development will somewhat settle, but just look at something trivial like a hammer ... there are so many different kinds and some have their favorite brand.

[morvita]

That's funny, I tried Go for Advent of Code last year and got through the first 10 days or so without any real difficulty, having never written a line of it before.

Just as there are different spoken/written languages and people find different ones easier or harder to learn based on a huge number of variables, I believe the same is true of programming languages. Sometimes it's the syntax that makes a language difficult, sometimes it's a different paradigm, sometimes it's an unfamiliar memory model or type system -- there are lots of things that can make your brain throw up a block when trying to dive into a new language.