Pages

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Unemployed in Summertime – Programming

Emiliana Torrini - Love in the Time of Science - Album Cover 

I’ve always wanted to work in Unemployed in Summertime since I first heard this song by Emiliana Torrini (from her Love in the Time of Science release). Alas, it applies to my situation now – at least for a few more weeks. In the space before my next trick (the last trick a la Anja Garbaek?) I’m taking some time to see what’s the latest in programming languages – since I feel like a pre-dinosaur of sorts (see for example diictodon which plays a role in the interesting BBC series Walking with Monsters that we saw recently.) Anyways, I found the TIOBE index and the LangPop* index of languages which rate programming languages by popularity. What’s popular as a measure is problematic as pointed out elsewhere, however, it is not without interest as a measure of some kind of common currency of communication. I guess I felt a bit deflated since the top 5 languages of the TIOBE index and the top 4 of the LangPop index are not languages I use at all. So I grit my teeth and decided to take a look at Python (not the snake) because I overheard a teenager talking about how awesome Python is. Maybe it's not the best reason for picking up a new language, but I'm unemployed in summertime so I have the luxury of entertaining bad motivation - at least for a little while.

* This link "http://langpop.com/" used to work, but hey nothing lasts forever on the internet.

2 comments:

  1. i hate teenagers. they think they know everything. just because their brains are firing rapidly and can learn these stupid new languages. why do they keep re-inventing the wheel anyway. i mean, why not just improve some of the coding languages they already have? kind of like css? they just keep updating it. programming is so lame. ;) (i kid.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. you jest, but there is truth there

    ReplyDelete

All comments go through a moderation process. Even though it may not look like the comment was accepted, it probably was. Check back in a day if you asked a question. Thanks!