[lamg]

Two years ago I felt just like you. It is overwhelming, there is a lot of people talking about the best approach, the best technology .... Don´t hear that, I am sure there is nice stuff around there, but what makes the difference is you. Thinking about programs is a nice advice, try to see things from different points of view. A year ago I did some hacking in Common Lisp and Haskell, that certainly changed my way of thinking. Now I am more interested in making things simple, I am hacking in Go now and trying out Plan 9, is really rewarding reading real world programs that are easy to understand.

[JQuinn]

Thanks. So are you suggest learning other programming languages that would oppose my current understanding, such as scripting and procedural languages to solve problems so my understanding is more diverse? Just trying to see what your suggestion for my next move would be. Thanks again for all of your help.

[lamg]

Just read a book like Practical Common Lisp, Land of Lisp or Learn Haskell for the greater good, you will learn how to do some interesting programs and you vision of side effects will change. I am trying out Go now, it is really nice too, if you want to read some code check out http://github.com/lamg/md2sexp, it is really easy to understand (but it does not work yet).

[lamg]

Looking at your known languages my advice is: * don´t make a world of objects and patterns (the gang ...). These stuff is advanced and you should be careful, there is no magic to solve all your problems. * KISS principle * do some data driven programming

[lamg]

And I forgot the best of all tips: good theory leads to good programs.

[JQuinn]

Thank you so much for your help. I will start looking into your suggested references. I know my Prior knowledge is in OOP but that is because it is the main focus these days for academics. Thanks again.