In computer languages, there are very few that are structurally different.
FORTRAN is like COBOL, which is like Pascal, which is like BASIC, which is like ADA, which is like …
Forth is not like those above. Nor is APL or Lisp.
Assembly languages can be used in structured ways, just like FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, and many others. It requires the discipline to use if not condition jump skip_label; do stuff in condition; skip_label:. The actual programming logic stays the same.
The two computer languages I dislike the most are PHP and Python. Both because they are weakly typed.
In a strongly typed language, you declare a variable’s type before you use it. The type of the variable is immutable for its lifetime.
In other words, if you declare a variable of being of type integer and then attempt to assign a string to it, it will barf on you during compilation.
In PHP, all variables look the same, any variable can hold any type at any moment. The type can change from line to line. And the language will do implicit type casting. It is hateful.
Python has all the same characteristics I hate in PHP, with the added hateful feature of using indentation instead of begin-and markers for blocks.
I’m lucky that Python has an optional typing capability, which I use consistently. The optional part is a pain when I want to use a module that has no typing information. When that happens, I need to create my own typing stub.
But the worse part of all of this is that they get jumbled together in my head. How many entries in an array? In PHP, that is determined by the count() function, in Python it is the len() function.
In Python, the dot (.) is used to access methods and attributes of objects. In PHP, it is the concatenation symbol.
I am tired of writing Python in my PHP files and I dread switching back to Python because I know my fingers will mess things up.
Comments
7 responses to “How Many Languages Do You Speak?”
I speak English and fluent carpenter words…
Like Ironworker language?
yes, close cousin. heh
I can speak American, a bit of English, a lot of Brooklynese and LawnGuylandish. I am also fluent in gibberish, nonsense, and Huh?
I speak English, American, and Canadian, and a little bit of French. I am absolutely fluent in FOOD, though, and can order FOOD in many languages, flawlessly. 😉
To me, Fortran and Basic are one class, Pascal and Ada and Algol are a different class.
Yes, Python is weakly typed. C is also not particularly strongly typed, nowhere near what Algol and its descendants have. It bites me at times but Python is nevertheless one of my favorite languages. Then again, for contrast I’ve gotten back to Forth recently.
I counted up the programming languages I know, to some extent. It adds up to about 50 (roughly one per year), counting each machine’s assembly language separately. There are two that I definitely will refuse to touch in the future: Tcl, and PHP.
I expected you to be asking about human languages. Know more than a few words: 7. Use fluently: 2. Use pretty comfortably: 3 or 4. Know a few words: perhaps 10 or so.
I like learning languages. I would like to learn more human languages, especially some of the more exotic ones. A while ago I downloaded grammars for Basque and Sumerian but haven’t gotten to either yet. I also like scripts; there are quiet a lot of them. Most are related though that isn’t always obvious. Looking at the many language versions of Wikipedia is a lot of fun. For some truly wild examples, try https://iu.wikipedia.org/wiki/ᐊᒥᖅ or https://chr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ᎤᎵᎮᎵᏍᏗ …
I’ve lost track of the computer languages I know. I got dumped into C# the other day. I didn’t notice it was a different language until I got a syntax error during the build process. They all just sort of run together. I know that I’m doing a conditional, I know I’m doing a loop, a function, a method. They just run together.
Today I got bit because it is
foreach ( $arrray as $scalar)and notfor ( $array as $scalar )which started asfor ($scalar in $array)