As much as I want it to be true, among Lisp, Erlang, Prolog, Ocaml/Haskell and Smalltalk (those are non-mainstream and definitely not bonker language) it's almost impossible for an average CS grad to be able to read them all.
Is it?
Sure, you might not understand all the intricacies of each, but I think the basic idea should be understandable when expressed in any of those languages. But I'm biased, I was exposed to Prolog in college and I learned Lisp and Haskell on my own (to an extent) so it's really difficult for me to judge what is and isn't readable.
But if you can read: foo.map(function (d) { return d+1; }), you should be able to read (map foo (+1)) imho.
Re:Hacker's guide to Neural Networks
by eli_gottlieb on Monday March 23, 2015 @10:42AM
(#9251169)
Among all of those, I've never used Prolog, and only had one summer project's experience in Erlang, and a tiny bit of coursework in Smalltalk. But I'm pretty sure that other than Prolog, I can figure out what's going in a program in any of those languages.
Mind, at the time I graduated undergrad, I had no real idea about Smalltalk. But that was 4 years ago.
12 years experience here. I think I could have a geuess at what Lisp code is doing, likewise with OCmal / Haskell. I have never written anything in any of them, but have read a couple for tutorials.
Never seem Erlang, Prolog or Smalltalk code.
I am capable of deciphering Perl code as long as its not too obfuscated.
Actually, I think a CS grad should be able to read any language as long as it's not completely bonkers like J or brainfuck or malbolge or something. But maybe I'm weird.