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Discussion on: Bite the bullet and roll with the punches. Starting to learn ELM.

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alephnaught2tog profile image
Max Cerrina

I mean... why does learning any new language matter?

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rhymes profile image
rhymes • Edited

Sorry, my question wasn't meant to downplay the importance of his quest. I'm all for learning odd languages and expanding one's mind as I said.

My question was purely practical and directed to the author: his tone is definitely excited but I noticed he didn't address the why :-)

I googled a bit (I'm 100% ignorant about Elm) and it seems a terrific language on paper.

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alephnaught2tog profile image
Max Cerrina

Totally fair :D Only reason I'm familiar with elm is my SQL teacher this semester really likes it so he'd mention it at and random and posted some articles about it just for fun.

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antonrich profile image
Anton

As far as I know SQL is a declarative language. Did you teacher liked ELM because ELM is also declarative?

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stoft profile image
Rasmus Larsson

I find that learning new languages teaches me new concepts and also gives me further insight into already known concepts from previous languages. These are things I then tend to bring back to my old language giving me new ways of solving problems in my old familiar environment/language. Two examples come to mind:

Learning C after Java gave me insight into references in Java and what the garbage collector gives me and what it costs me.

After learning Elixir I started using functional constructs in JavaScript much more often.