I started to learn Ruby, o yeah !!

why ? because i can, that’s why… okay, okay, because i want to be able to use that oh so great and almighty Ruby on Rails, brother !

Actually, many have advised that you just need a handful of Ruby basic to be able to use Rails, but i think that will be equivalent of having a ten thousands French word traveller dictionary and then fly to Paris.

The bigger picture is that i’m sick and tired of all those “mine is better than yours” attitude when it comes to programming language. I believe that a programming language is no different with natural language. You use it because you need to communicate and furthermore, get things done.period.

I only believe that one language could do specific purpose better than others, but i never believe that there is one ultimate, do-it-all language. I also have preferences, mostly because i need to get things done quickly using language i deem fit for the right job. Hey, why should i write a servlet if all i need is just a simple contact form and mailer ? spare 10 minutes of your busy time and use php, that will do fine.

There’s a saying : “Good programmer learn one new programming language every year”. There’s nothing more i could agree with. My first language was BASIC, the version for IBM PC-XT, then Pascal as in Turbo Pascal, then a little bit of Assembler, because i think that will be cool if i can directly control PC hardware using it, which i then drop because it brought me more headaches than fun, then a little bit of C/C++, javascript, then PHP, which i find useful to make a living… I learn a bit on some more exotic language, like Scheme, Haskell, and even Erlang, and … it’s like learning Latin, what the hell was i thinking … I learn and then use Java by force, because i have projects that require it, which is okay, at least i can create nice software for my phone, then came Python, by which then i also learn the beauty aspect of a programming language, and now came Ruby, which is even more beautiful, because it has strong resemblance and logic of natural language, namely English language, a human language, yay !!

No, I’m not praising Ruby, but the point is, every language has it’s own strength and weakness. And also depend on your habit and common sense on using them. Human has uncanny ability to adapt, while paradoxically make them averse to changes. Like hitting semicolon in Python and BASIC, or forgot that indentation is a must in Python, i think those are glitches commonly happen in natural human language, of course , syntax is more stringent in programming language, but you see the big picture.

I truly believe that programming language is like natural language, in a sense that every individual programmer has one language the know best, like native language, although they’re not necessarily like it, because that will be the earliest language they learn to understand the concept of programming. And then came another ( or several other languages ) they learn, and then like to use, because they find it easier to fit their needs, and make their good living nonetheless :)

I strongly encourage learning multiple programming language, just so we know that there’s no point on “mine i is better than yours” attitude. PHP tends to become a mess of spaghetti, we all know that, Perl is arcane and makes me feels old, Java is slow and resource hog, etc, etc… but also remember, PHP is easy and forgiving, Perl has short list of reserved functions, while having a huge repository of nifty modules ready to be used by anybody around the world. So, I suggest, go out and play, find out about lots more programming languages, from the cryptic one into the most elegant one, and you’ll see why becoming (programming) language neutral won’t make you less valuable from the rest of the world. It will only teach you to tap the best of each programming languages, and never the other way around.