Ask HN: Should I learn only one language until I know it all?

Re:Ask HN: Should I learn only one language until I know it ... by MichaelCrawford on Thursday June 25, 2015 @11:00PM (#9782252)

I regard it as vitally important that everyone learn the assembly code of at least one instruction set architecture. Not so much because you will ever need to write any, but because all programming languages ultimately result in machine code.

If your java or php or sql or haskell or python suck, the reason your users can tell that they suck, is because your machine code sucks.

The simple awareness of what goes on under the hood will make you better at any language.

Aside from that its helpful to learn several distinctly different paradigms, like python, lisp, c++ and smalltalk.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I learn only one language until I know it ... by p1esk on Friday June 26, 2015 @07:07PM (#9788262)

If by "sucks" you mean "slow", it's probably because of an inefficient algorithm. Knowing assembly won't make you realize you're doing O(n^2) where you can do O(n). These days it's hard to justify learning assembly for someone who's not planning to write high performance low level code, and even there, your time might be better spent learning GPU programming or multithreading.

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Re:Ask HN: Should I learn only one language until I know it ... by codygman on Friday June 26, 2015 @04:15AM (#9782957)

I do plan on understanding the STG, C--, and Assembler code Haskell compiles to... eventually :)

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