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Seven Languages
Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks: Languages That Are Shaping the Future
Great programmers aren't born--they're made. The industry is moving from object-oriented languages to functional languages, and you need to commit to radical improvement. New programming languages arm you with the tools and idioms you need to refine your craft. While other language primers take you through basic installation and "Hello, World," we aim higher. Each language in Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks will take you on a step-by-step journey through the most important paradigms of our time. You'll learn seven exciting Lua, Factor, Elixir, Elm, Julia, MiniKanren, and Idris.
Learn from the award-winning programming series that inspired the Elixir language. Hear how other programmers across broadly different communities solve problems important enough to compel language development. Expand your perspective, and learn to solve multicore and distribution problems.
In each language, you'll solve a non-trivial problem, using the techniques that make that language special. Write a fully functional game in Elm, without a single callback, that compiles to JavaScript so you can deploy it in any browser. Write a logic program in Clojure using a programming model, MiniKanren, that is as powerful as Prolog but much better at interacting with the outside world. Build a distributed program in Elixir with Lisp-style macros, rich Ruby-like syntax, and the richness of the Erlang virtual machine. Build your own object layer in Lua, a statistical program in Julia, a proof in code with Idris, and a quiz game in Factor.
When you're done, you'll have written programs in five different programming paradigms that were written on three different continents. You'll have explored four languages on the leading edge, invented in the past five years, and three more radically different languages, each with something significant to teach you.
Learn from the award-winning programming series that inspired the Elixir language. Hear how other programmers across broadly different communities solve problems important enough to compel language development. Expand your perspective, and learn to solve multicore and distribution problems.
In each language, you'll solve a non-trivial problem, using the techniques that make that language special. Write a fully functional game in Elm, without a single callback, that compiles to JavaScript so you can deploy it in any browser. Write a logic program in Clojure using a programming model, MiniKanren, that is as powerful as Prolog but much better at interacting with the outside world. Build a distributed program in Elixir with Lisp-style macros, rich Ruby-like syntax, and the richness of the Erlang virtual machine. Build your own object layer in Lua, a statistical program in Julia, a proof in code with Idris, and a quiz game in Factor.
When you're done, you'll have written programs in five different programming paradigms that were written on three different continents. You'll have explored four languages on the leading edge, invented in the past five years, and three more radically different languages, each with something significant to teach you.
318 pages, Paperback
First published September 25, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 27, 2016
I read this book because I enjoyed its predecessor: Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. The seven languages in the predecessor were much more relevant and up-and-coming, such as Erlang, Scala, and Haskell (oddly, it also had a chapter on Prolog, which is quite old). Seven More Languages covers another seven languages, again focusing on functional languages, but they are much more esoteric. You probably haven't heard of most of them, such as Elixer, Elm, and Idris. I didn't get nearly as much out of this book as I did the first book. Most of it I just scanned over. Elm was a weird love child of Haskell and JavaScript. Idris was just a Haskell rip-off, that amazingly found a way to make Haskell even harder to understand. However, this was worth reading because it helped me discovered Julia, which I've had great fun playing with. This book also gave me a new found appreciation of Lua.
March 8, 2017
I'd say 4.5 stars. Decent coverage of most languages, a bit facile. I think the Lua one was the best, but I'm already the most familiar with Lua. I had some experience with most of these languages, and I think it's a great launching off point. I think the sole issue is that the book is tied to versions of compilers that may not exist anymore, and a little bit more care could be paid in the text to point out what version is being used (Looking at YOU, Elm section). Overall, a great refresher of topics and languages if you have some experience in the field they're talking about. Don't know if I'd want to learn about (types | macros | …) from this book, but if you already a feel for them it's a great first coverage for another language's use of the same.
December 7, 2016
I got this primarily for its coverage of Julia, but hey, the more languages, the better, right? Of course it will not make one a master of any of the languages covered herein, but it is sufficient to give one the background necessary to continue exploring, should one's interest be piqued. Mine was, for more than one of the languages covered.
August 7, 2023
A lot of technical details in this book are probably outdated at this point, and I didn't expect to actually learn any of the languages through these short overviews. Still, I thought they were really interesting. I think Factor and Idris were probably the most eye-opening to me. They're just so different from the languages I normally work in, and it's fun to see completely different approaches like that. MiniKanren too, although I don't think I understood that one very well.
I picked this book up as part of the Elixir programming bundle on Humble Bundle because we were starting to use Elixir at work. This book actually wasn't super useful to me for learning Elixir since I had already been learning it in other ways. I still think Elixir is a cool language, and this book could probably give you a decent idea about what it's like.
So overall this maybe isn't the most practical book to learn new languages (at least for me). But it's a very interesting survey. And I think it's useful to at least learn about what other languages are out there, even if you never use them. Can't hurt to expand your horizons!
I picked this book up as part of the Elixir programming bundle on Humble Bundle because we were starting to use Elixir at work. This book actually wasn't super useful to me for learning Elixir since I had already been learning it in other ways. I still think Elixir is a cool language, and this book could probably give you a decent idea about what it's like.
So overall this maybe isn't the most practical book to learn new languages (at least for me). But it's a very interesting survey. And I think it's useful to at least learn about what other languages are out there, even if you never use them. Can't hurt to expand your horizons!
December 17, 2022
A way weaker than the first one, IMHO. The first book was about strong sides of languages and not about usual stuff like "this is how one can loop in XYZ", but in "seven more" one can find a lot of such stuff. Although, some parts are quite nice: chapters about Lua, Factor, Idris and miniKanren were fun to read. An Elm part is just obsolete because of the language's recent changes. An Elixir part is the most "syntactic" in the whole book and it is sad.
September 13, 2024
I started reading these for fun. Easy to read books with examples and gentle conversation.
I ended up being a fan of this series. I've started gaining something else from these books, something bigger. Each chapter describes not just a language but the state of mind of the people who decided to create that language. Reading the depth between the lines I started to feel more comprehensive with everyone's stances on problems. Such a vast set of almost orthogonal ideas, it feels enriching to appreciate these creations and to understand the creators a bit.
I ended up being a fan of this series. I've started gaining something else from these books, something bigger. Each chapter describes not just a language but the state of mind of the people who decided to create that language. Reading the depth between the lines I started to feel more comprehensive with everyone's stances on problems. Such a vast set of almost orthogonal ideas, it feels enriching to appreciate these creations and to understand the creators a bit.
December 18, 2017
It was an okay book, but the languages were somehow both less interesting, at the same time as feeling less usable than the ones in the first book, at times still an interesting read though.
February 13, 2018
The continuation of the original Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book is better, describes more diverse languages, but of course it's still a very brief introduction into each of the seven languages. So it is good to read through, and do the exercises, to see if you like anything and certainly to get to know some ideas from other languages — there are a lot.
Note that Elm has changed significantly since when the book was written and there are no more `Signal`s out of the box, however adapting to the new architecture was surprisingly easy.
Note that Elm has changed significantly since when the book was written and there are no more `Signal`s out of the box, however adapting to the new architecture was surprisingly easy.
July 31, 2015
Not nearly as enlightening or thought-provoking as the original, but still worth reading. Seven Languages in Seven Weeks opened my eyes and turned me from my narrow-minded Java ways into the wider world of programming paradigms. This book, after the first, was a huge disappointment, but still worth reading. I didn't bother with most of the exercises except with Lua (which I'd already used a bit) and Factor, which seemed interesting. The first book was a manifesto proclaiming freedom and enlightenment, where this book was a tourists guide to some interesting, but less relevant places.
March 20, 2016
After reading Seven Languages in Seven Weeks I was eager to get this book. In the first book I found Ruby and used it since then and therefore hoped to repeat that experience. Unfortunately, the languages covered in this book are all relatively new and have an uncertain future. It’s like more of the same but with less relevant players. Maybe that judgement will change when those languages get more traction, but until then I’m disappointed.
August 16, 2014
The list of languages is a bit eclectic, but it's a good read if you just want to expose yourself to a bunch of (relatively) new concepts
June 18, 2016
I didn't get the same feeling of grasping the languages ideas as I had after reading the first 7-in-7 book.
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October 1, 2018It's a frustrating book that I'm not sure I would recommend to anyone. If you are interested in any of the languages covered you'd do better looking for tutorials and blog posts and videos online as this book won't give you enough of what you want.
A major frustration, that the authors can't really be blamed for, is that having been written in 2014 using languages that were still early in development much of the content is now mildly broken or completely irrelevant for a reader in 2018. The Elm chapter in particular focuses on a feature removed from the current version making the chapter almost entirely useless.
The authors say in the introduction that there won't be much time for each language and you'll have to do a lot of work for yourself to get the most out of each chapter. Even with that caveat I still feel like they could have done a better job of explaining what they wanted us to get out of these languages. The final chapter, "Wrapping up", does an ok job of this, but it would have been better to have this mixed into the chapter for each language rather than at the end where it's too late for a frustrated reader.
One good thing however is that many chapters include interviews with the language creators exploring why they created the languages, or their favourite features. A full book of these would be excellent, but that's not what we have here.
A major frustration, that the authors can't really be blamed for, is that having been written in 2014 using languages that were still early in development much of the content is now mildly broken or completely irrelevant for a reader in 2018. The Elm chapter in particular focuses on a feature removed from the current version making the chapter almost entirely useless.
The authors say in the introduction that there won't be much time for each language and you'll have to do a lot of work for yourself to get the most out of each chapter. Even with that caveat I still feel like they could have done a better job of explaining what they wanted us to get out of these languages. The final chapter, "Wrapping up", does an ok job of this, but it would have been better to have this mixed into the chapter for each language rather than at the end where it's too late for a frustrated reader.
One good thing however is that many chapters include interviews with the language creators exploring why they created the languages, or their favourite features. A full book of these would be excellent, but that's not what we have here.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews