r/learnprogramming • u/Suspicious-Fix-295 • 11h ago

When languages "just become about syntax"

I have seen a lot of post saying "once I learned C - all other languages just became about syntax"

Has that been true for you? Or did a different language give you the eureka moment - e.g. something like Assembly?

Or is it just a false premise at all to think "once I learn programming language X - then all other languages become **easy**"

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u/SchemeWestern3388 11h ago

I will die on this hill. 

Lisp is the most capable language ever. Just get over the fact that it’s 70 years old and full of  parentheses. 

Oh, you like object oriented programming? A couple hundred lines of lisp, you got it. Think generators are cool? Here ya go. Would it be even cooler if we could have a language aimed at making my problem easier to tackle? Let’s do that then. 

It is not the solution to every task, but in terms of pure flexibility and abstraction, it’s king. 

SICP (the holy text) has you building a compiler by chapter 5, for fucks sake!