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Re: [xsl] <quote>XSL is NOT easy</quote>

2007-06-26 01:44:59
On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:45:50 -0600, M. David Peterson <m(_dot_)david(_at_)xmlhacker(_dot_)com> wrote:

<quote>
LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot.
</quote>
Eric S. Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker" @ http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Here's another really good quote which is where I originally located the above quote,

<quote>
This melding of code and data is central to all dialects of Lisp, and is fundamental to the way Microsoft is integrating multiple expression languages (most notably SQL) in future versions of the Microsoft® .NET Framework.
</quote>

-- Don Box, "Scheme is Love", MSDN Magazine {End Bracket}, October, 2005 @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/10/EndBracket/

In short, while functional programming languages such as Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, XSLT, and XQuery might seem difficult to understand, their influence on the main stream programming languages of the past and present is obvious (XSLT, XQuery, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby are all good examples of modern day programming languages heavily rooted in Lisp and Scheme), and their future influence is undeniable,

Learn them now and have a *GREAT* programming job in 10 years. XSLT, XQuery, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Haskell, and Smalltalk are *ALL* wonderful languages that everyone should learn at least one of *REALLY* well.

--
/M:D

M. David Peterson
http://mdavid.name | http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2354 | http://dev.aol.com/blog/3155

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