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I have been thinking of learning some programming recently, but I don't feel confident enough. Is there any point in beginning with something like Zig or Go, and switching to something more serious later?

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[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 18 hours ago

Sure, but many languages do that, see my answer below. I just personally wouldn't recommend either lisp or haskell to someone learning how to program. There are more modern and better ways, IMO.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Sure, but many languages do that,

I wrote several paragraphs and talked about three languages, so I'm going to have to guess about what "that" refers to. I'm guessing it's Lisp macros. Your other comment offers template metaprogramming in C++ as an alternative.

Template metaprogramming Gets maybe a third of the way to what Lisp macros offer. It can do compile-time syntax transformations, but it doesn't provide the full C++ language with which to do so, doesn't operate on the actual parse tree, and isn't Turing-complete in practice because of fixed limits on recursion depth in real compilers. Rust macros get much closer, providing the full power of Rust and the option to get at a real AST by parsing the token stream they operate on.

If you mean something else, please elaborate. It's an interesting topic.

There are more modern and better ways, IMO.

I'm not sure what "more modern" means in this context. If it just means young, I can probably find a Lisp family language with its first release this year, though that wouldn't be the one I would recommend to a beginner. If it means recently-updated, Racket, the Lisp I recommended learning had its latest stable release nine days ago. If it means something else, please say so.

"Better" probably can't be measured objectively, but by all means, make the case for something else.

this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
89 points (95.9% liked)

Programming

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