Programming in Interesting Times
summary
Programming languages die or become zombies and the evidence is concrete: top five share drops 74%→54% (2002–2014) and popularity follows a runaway hit-song curve, not quality. Languages take real time to learn: learning costs: C++ 1–2 years, Ruby ≈3 months (~500 hours). Less-popular languages concentrates in domains (Ruby for small web apps, Fortran for numeric kernels). Pick by the architectural questions you care about — modularity, typing, concurrency — and prefer switching to a different language family for real capability and early innovation.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Start
- 7:47How Long Does It Take To Become Productive in these Programming Languages
- 10:15What Exactly Is a Programming Language
- 21:53How Do You Pick a Programming Language
- 23:39Mental Interference
- 30:21How Do I Pick a New Programming Language
- 31:52Object-Oriented Programming Is Not One Thing
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