7 Languages Study Group - 3rd Meeting

Continue our amazing language journey with Prolog -- join us for the third language of Seven Languages in Seven Weeks.

Last meeting we had a smaller group for Io. What a mind bend! Be prepared for even more mind-bending goodness with Prolog. The oldest and possibly the oddest of the languages covered in this book, Prolog can be an amazingly powerful tool to add to your arsenal. Work through the burn -- it's worth it!

Since we are delaying our meeting by two weeks, you are also invited to get together with Abby and work on some of the exercises, as Prolog is one of her pet languages. Email if interested.

1:00-1:30 - snacking and networking

1:30-2:00 - review of vocabulary and questions

2:00-4:00 - the code!

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks
(http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks)
This book should appeal to developers with a wide range of experience levels. It aims to give you hands-on experiences with seven languages, and to teach you HOW to learn a language quickly. The languages targeted are Clojure, Scala, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Erlang, and Ruby. Among them, four distinct programming language paradigms are represented. What better way to get your feet wet/build your coder chops than to stretch your brain with all these different languages?

Check out the book's preview on Amazon for descriptions of the languages and the book's goals! In particular, the sections called Buy This Book and Don't Buy This Book describe what's covered (and what's not), and how.

Companies who use these languages:

Clojure: A number of companies, notably Citigroup; also local company Sonian. http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Clojure+Success+Stories

Erlang: Notably, Facebook, Amazon, Motorola, Ericcson, primarily for back-end

Haskell: A long list of companies, including Facebook, BofA Meryll Lynch, and Google. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_in_industry

Io: ? But many people seem to think it is an efficient and elegant language!

Prolog: Local companies ioSemantics LLC and Sozora; certain NASA projects; Ericcson's Network Resource Manager, and others. http://sicstus.sics.se/customers.html for a short list; http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/the-practical-application-of-prolog/184405220 for another.

Ruby: A ton of users in Boulder/Denver. http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/success-stories/ , http://www.setfiremedia.com/blog/50-of-the-best-websites-developed-using-ruby-on-rails

Scala: A growing trend seems to be companies switching from Ruby to Scala as they scale. Notable users are: FullContact (local!), Twitter (formerly Ruby), Tumblr (formerly Ruby), LinkedIn, FourSquare, Xerox, Siemens. http://www.scala-lang.org/node/1658