Ask HN: Which programming language should a journeyman programmer learn?
2 by blueslurpee | 5 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN, I'm looking for some advice and/or enthusiasm on which programming language you might recommend to a young journeyman programmer looking to broaden their horizons beyond the mainstream imperative stock. As some background: Like many from the past decade, I was introduced to programming and cut my teeth via Python, and while it holds a soft spot in my heart for its lovely syntax and idioms (personal preference), I am growing weary of chasing down run-time errors in production and the squishyness of its type system (or lack thereof). From there I've followed along the well-trodden path of imperative/OO languages one would expect to become acquainted with during the "standard" CS education, namely C & Java, along with some Golang thrown into the mix. I adore C for its close mental alignment to the computer's operations, and while I appreciate Golang and Java and have no great qualms with either, they don't scratch a certain itch. My daily driver at work is Typescript. I find writing vanilla js to be generally objectionable. I would classify myself as a competent journeyman, and I am really looking to branch out and broaden my perspectives. I'm not sure what itch it is I'm trying to scratch, but I'm looking for an enthusiastic community and a language that brings a lot of "joy", if that makes sense. I'm not looking for any commercial benefit out of this, but hey, if being an expert in the lang is highly profitable, that's also a data point. A good type system might be where my interests are first piqued, but it's not a hard requirement. Similarly, my mind jumps to Functional Programming, but purity is not a requirement either. So, if you're an experienced vet, found yourself in a similar situation beforehand, have been having similar inclinations, or are just a fanboy/girl for your specific lang, please share your thoughts! Should I be wrangling data functional-style sans types with Clojure? Playing around with the BEAM with Elixir/Erlang? Diving into Scala types and the Akka framework? Jump into the deep end with Haskell? Try my hand at Rust and systems software? Ocaml, a language I know nothing about? I have formal CS training, so I'm not overly intimidated by the more "academic" languages. Thanks a lot in advance!