An Unexpected Insight

Way back when I was a newish programmer, I discovered something that probably every programmer has discovered: explaining the problem you're stuck on to somebody else will often cause the penny to drop and you'll see the answer quite clearly just because you have articulated the story for the other person. It turns out that this effect is not limited to solving programming puzzles.

Just the other day, I wrote about my decision to return to Python, specifically Python 3.2+, for my next software project and I articulated some reasons for that decision. Telling my small blog audience about that was a catalyst.

Yesterday, while working on something not connected with software, I became aware that I was unhappy about something. I let that awareness sit for a couple of hours while i completed my task and then sat down in a comfy chair to reflect.

What became clear to me was that I was unhappy about the Python decision. One of the goals of my recent research into programming languages was that I felt the urge to learn a new language. Not just any new language, but a language that would introduce me to some aspect of programming that was not familiar to me. While Python 3 is a new language for a Python 1.2 programmer, it's not really a new language and doesn't involve the kind of learning I had in mind. And so, if I just focus on Python, I'll certainly be able to write some software, but I won't get the mental stretch I was looking for.

Further thought has given me a new plan. I will still learn the latest Python incarnation properly and keep up to date with it, because it seems likely that Python's ease of use, wide applicability and the excellent local Python community are all things that will make it a useful language for me to employ for quite some time. But I will continue my study of some functional languages, excluding Erlang for the reasons I gave the other day, focusing on Haskell and Clojure for the time being. One new idea that came out of my latest thinking is that it might be smarter for me to devote smaller bits of time more regularly to my study rather than trying to read several pages of a dense textbook in one sitting.

I need to keep reminding myself that one of the principal goals is for this to be enjoyable. Hopefully, this two-pronged approach that allows me the time to get comfortable with two or three languages together will produce the result I'm looking for.

Back to Normal

I've neglected this blog over the past seven months, due initially to escalating family dramas and then to inertia. The dramas are not material for the blog and seem to have settled sufficiently for me to turn back to what I call normal life.

My major project this year has been to tackle some new software development and, as part of that, to learn some new stuff. That took me on a tour of interesting programming languages in the hope that I could combine a new language with my development project. In no particular order, I've looked at some Lisp languages (Scheme, Common Lisp, Clojure) and some functional languages (Erlang, Haskell). All of them appeal in some ways and not in others. I'll try to cover the salient points in subsequent posts, but the take home lesson is that I've decided to go back to an old favourite, Python, for now.

I've been writing in Python for almost twenty years, and the fact that most of my code is written for Python-1.2 is a symptom of that. I've modified it over the years to accommodate what I call gratuitous changes in the language and libraries (which the Python community have of course all considered carefully and determined to be improvements). Being fully engaged in my work, I have not participated in the Python development process in any way for many years and that has left me in an awkward position when it comes to whining about the evolution of the language.

So I've decided on two steps for the immediate future. I'm going to sit down and learn Python-3.2+ thoroughly to get up to speed with the current state of the language and I'm going to pay attention to the ongoing development of the language in order to stay current. I may even manage to contribute in some way to Python. I'll probably return to some of those other languages in a year or so, to keep my brain open to useful ideas, but I think most of my work will be with Python and C for the present.