[olug] [OT] New Language for the Year

[Mike Hostetler]

Disregard this message if you are not a programmer, or not interested in
learning an obscure language -- you will only receive this once.

I'm a big fan of the book "The Pragmatic Programmer", and it has changed how
I have thought about programming, and has got me creating better programs.
One of the things they mentioned in the book is learning a new language
every year. The idea is that, even though you may not use the new language
professionally, you can take concepts of that language and apply it to the
ones you use day-to-day.  Even though I haven't done this, I think it has
great merit -- I had a job that I worked with XSLT's every day.  Now, even
though I don't do that, some of the pure functional ideas of XSLT has
enabled me to write better Python apps (which is what I am doing now).

As an offshoot of this, a bunch of developers started a "Language of the
Year" (LotY) study group.  It has an email list
 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pragprog/) and a Wiki
(http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/cgi-local/pragprog?LanguageOfTheYear).
And they just talk about it on the internet, post on the Wiki and it's cool.
But I think it would be neat to do this on a local level -- have the mailing
list, the Wiki, but get together once a month or a few times a year and talk
about it, network, workshop and learn a little.

So this is my call -- who wants to join me??  If we can get at least three or
four others, I'd say we do it.  We can start on January 1, 2003, but we have
to choose a language, get the list setup, etc.

A few caveats, though:
   o you really ought to be somewhat experienced.  The rest of the group
shouldn't have to teach you basic OOP concepts, etc.
   o the language should be somewhat obscure. We don't want to teach people Perl,
Python, or PHP.  I'm thinking most like Haskell, Oz, OCaml, etc.
   o even though it is obscure, it needs to be actively developed and have
good online tutorials (a good printed book wouldn't be bad either).

If you want to join me, reply back and we'll get going.  If you know someone
who may be interested, and lives in the LNK-OMA area, feel free to forward
them this message.

over and out,

-- mikeh

--
Mike Hostetler
thehaas at binary.net
http://www.binary.net/thehaas
GnuPG key: http://www.binary.net/thehaas/mikeh.gpg