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by GFischer
4660 days ago
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What's your definition of "picking up" a language? A) Writing a "Hello, World"? B) being able to fix a simple bug in a program? C) Writing a small program that solves some domain problem D) Writing a program that solves a "real world" problem, making use of the programming languages' strengths and conforming to standards (something that other people would let you commit into a repository unchallenged :) ) I'm certain A) takes only a few hours, and B) can be done in a day. As Norvig says, you can do C) if you write in the new language like you would in a language you already know (not much of a problem if we're talking C# vs Java). But D) IMO takes weeks/months. |
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Ignoring OTP, my ability to use the language proper was pretty much complete within a week, owing to its simplicity and my prior background in functional languages.
This is in contrast to C, which I have been using for around 15 years now, yet am still learning nuances of the language. (Things like: which integer operations are undefined on negative numbers; how integer promotion works with shift operators; how "restrict" interacts with scope.)
C is almost a fractal of nuance that does take years of experience to comprehend; Erlang has no nuance. (The closest thing to nuance I can think of is the relationship between integers and floats; and even then the takeaway is "it just works; don't worry about it". The only language in which I've seen the number hierarchy handled more cleanly is Racket.)