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title = "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks"
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date = 2019-07-16
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updated = 2021-02-12
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["books", "reviews", "bruce a tate", "clojure", "haskell", "io",
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"prolog", "scala", "erlang", "ruby", "it", "stars:1", "published:2010"]
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[GoodReads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7912517-seven-languages-in-seven-weeks):
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You should learn a programming language every year, as recommended by The
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Pragmatic Programmer. But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages
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in Seven Weeks? In this book you'll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell,
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Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is
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on that list, you'll broaden your perspective of programming by examining
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these languages side-by-side. You'll learn something new from each, and best
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of all, you'll learn how to learn a language quickly.
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<!-- more -->
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{{ stars(stars=1) }}
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A couple of random thoughts about this book:
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First off, you have the idea that, for each language the author would spend
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one week (I'll not get into the fact that each "week" has 3 days only). This
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is a great idea: How much of the concepts of a programming language can you
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capture in just one week. Are the interfaces good? Are they simple and easy to
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understand? The fact is, the author did not spend one week on each language.
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In the Clojure chapter, he mentions that he got the idea after a month. So
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instead of trying to capture the good and bad points in one week -- which,
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again, it's a good thing, so one can understand how "ergonomic" a language is
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-- the author decided the reader should only take one week per language.
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Second, there is a huge about of "obvious", "obviously" and "simple". Sure, it
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may seem obvious for the author, but most of the time, things are not obvious
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for people who never saw anything related.
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Not only there is an abuse of "obvious" things, sometimes the author seems to
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either not understand some concepts of the language or tries to simplify an
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explanation to the point it sounds wrong -- and I just realized that 'cause
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I've read books about some of the languages.
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And there are times when the author shows a piece of code, with something
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completely new, and forgets to explain what that new thing means. I'm glad
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I've read books about Clojure and Haskell before, otherwise I'd never
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understand what the thing really was.
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On the general, it's a book about seven languages. Instead of reading this
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book, I'd suggest getting the list of languages and going after them in other
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ways instead of reading this.
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