An Ode To My Two Loves

[Alex Martelli]

Jorgen Grahn <jgrahn-nntq at algonet.se> wrote:

> I also notice I forget one language after doing another for a few weeks. And
> it's not just brackets and semicolons -- I also try to use one language's
> idioms in the other. People who /claim/ they have no trouble switching
> languages seem to have the same problem.

I don't find it a problem as long as the languages are simple and
well-separated.  Python and C are a good example: each is simple, and
each is pretty well-focused -- high-level vs low-level.

It's not necessarily easy if you're continuously going back and forth
between C++ and Java, for example -- in such a case, it seems to me that
transitioning into the proper mindset for each language may well be a
nonzero effort, since the languages aren't really all that simple, and
they have quite some overlap despite all the differences.

I have no experience with such switching between (say) Ruby and Python
-- both simple but vastly overlapping in scope.


Alex