One New Language a Year: (was) Smalltalk

OK, so I had this crazy plan of doing the "one new language a year" thing. I really like the idea of this. Get out of your comfort zone, prevent settling for a "blub" language, learn new techniques. So I choose smalltalk and thought this would fit the bill. I was really excited to work with turtles all the way down. "Real" object oriented programming. Etc.

And here it is May and I'm just not doing so well. Best laid schemes and all that. In fact I've decided to abandon it for, get this, emacslisp. Only time will tell if this was a good decision or just my normal fickleness.

Part of this decision is just pure pragmatism. My learning windows for this plan are of necessity going to be early in the morning before breakfast or late at night after the family's in bed. I've tried both slots for a month or more and both put me to sleep. You can't learn much while you are asleep so no matter the plan/desire I have to be doing something that engages my attention.

OK, I said it. Smalltalk puts me to sleep. And I feel bad for saying it. I really want to be the guy who likes smalltalk and wields it with authority. But there is just so much I don't enjoy about it and while I'm sure there are some cool things to learn from it, it just doesn't entice me. At least not at 6 am. We'll see if emacslisp can do better.

Smalltalk is like this quirky, fairly attractive girl who on paper seems like a good match for you ("Wow, you like continuations? Me too!") but for whatever reason just doesn't ignite that spark. In addition, she has lots of eccentricities that if she was "the one" would be charming/braggable. But if you are indifferent to her they just come off as irritations/oddities.

I also wonder if watching this video put the final nail in the coffin: "what killed smalltalk" (also). Just hearing about smalltalk being dead (I'm not defending this thesis) sort of activated my pragmatism module which some how grabbed the reins of my brain and executed veto power.

The thing that bugs me is that I don't see myself as a practical dude. In fact, I find the thought of being practical a little bit horrifying. I'm always doing things just because they are interesting, not because I'm trying to be more efficient, etc. And here I am making a practical decision. Ugg.

I wonder what the rules are about abandoning your "one new language a year" language halfway through the year. Is there some governing body I should contact? Do I need to ask permission first?

For what it's worth, smalltalk is not permanently abandoned; it is just pushed down on the list. If I stick with the language a year program I will almost certainly head back to smalltalk at some point. We'll see what happens next time around.

Does working with python as your primary language makes it harder to learn new languages? Every language that I've learned so far has been a productivity boost or has some other sweetener (my language history: basic -> pascal -> c -> c++ -> java -> perl -> python). emacslisp is a booster just because it is the only option in emacs (I will be looking into pymacs though). haskell looks like it might be a next step in the awesomeness hierarchy. But smalltalk doesn't *seem* (in my limited experience) like a significantly more productive tool past python. smalltalk feels like a language from which many great ideas have been lifted. And the ones that haven't yet are either in the process of being stolen (pypy - turtles all the way down) or aren't worth the trouble (image files, etc).

What's funny is that I've talked to others who have had the same initial fascination with smalltalk and then given up on it due various pain points or lack or practicality.

I guess in the end part of it is that smalltalk doesn't seem to solve a problem that I'm having in a vastly superior way and (surprisingly to me) isn't more fun. On paper it seems it should be. And I actually feel guilty for not liking smalltalk. I've failed the gods of language geekdom.

Any way, on to the new hotness of, er, emacslisp.

So why emacslisp? At the start of the year I was trying to decide between smalltalk and haskell. I was in sort of an object-y mood at the time so smalltalk won out. I'm not defaulting to haskell at this time primarily because I want to give it the full year (and it just feels like it has to be a calendar year starting in January). emacslisp works because I know it will be useful. It will make a real difference to my productivity immediately (I mostly live in emacs) and I like lispy languages (though I've only dabbled and/or used them for a semester in an ai class). *And* I don't feel too bad about giving it only half a year.

My goal with emasclisp is to get to the point where I can program in it as easily as I think (how it is for python with me now). I want to be able to whip out useful helper functions like this and be able to write my own modes and/or hack on existing emacs packages.

Any way, smalltalk, it's not you it's me. When I get my head right maybe we'll meet again and give it another shot. I wish you all the best. (but please don't call - I'm not sure emacslisp would understand us "just being friends").