GoKawiilThe seven programming ur-languages
I regularly hear people asking which programming language to learn, and then reeling off a list of very similar languages (“Should I learn Java, C#, C++, Python, or Ruby?”). In response I usually tell them that it doesn’t really matter, as long as they get started. There are fundamentals behind them.
What do I mean when I say fundamentals? If you have an array or list of items and you’re going to loop over it, that is the same in any imperative language. There is straightforward iteration
int [ 10 ] arr ; arr for ( int i = 0 ; i < 10 ; i ++) { // do something with arr[i] }
and there is iterating over all unordered combinations
int [ 10 ] arr ; arr for ( int i = 0 ; i < 10 ; i ++) { for ( int j = i + 1 ; j < 10 ; j ++) { // do something with arr[i] and arr[j] } }
and a few other patterns, but those patterns are basically the same in C, Java, Python, or Fortran. Having neural pathways that fluently express intention in these patterns, the same way you express thoughts in sentence structures in English, are fundamentals.
But not all languages have the same set of patterns. The patterns for looping in C or Python are very different from the patterns of recursion in Standard ML or Prolog. The way you organize a program in Lisp, where you name new language constructs, is very different from how you organize it in APL, where fragments of symbol sequences are both the definitions of behavior and become the label for that behavior in your mind.
These distinct collections of fundamentals form various ur-languages. Learning a new language that traces to the same ur-language is an easy shift. Learning one that traces to an unfamiliar ur-language requires significant time and effort and new neural pathways.
I am aware of seven ur-languages in software today. I’ll name them for a type specimen, the way a species in paleontology is named for a particular fossil that defines it and then other fossils are compared to the type specimen to determine their identity. The ur-languages are:
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