?

[Jens Grabarske]

Skybuck Flying schrieb:
> Dude, Seriously.
> 

Dude, I AM serious.

> What does Oz have to offer me that other languages can't offer me ? :)

I already gave you a pretty long list.
I already gave you a good book recommendation to read on.

> 
> What is all this *stuff* good for ? :):):)
> 

You will see what it is good for when you learned how to use it. You 
know, there are people on this planet who don't know what a computer is 
or what to do with it. And they will tell you "What is all this stuff 
good for? Why do I need an USB mouse? I have a living one in my closet 
and I would be glad if I could get rid of it, why should I buy one for 
30 bucks?" - and you know what? There's nothing you can tell these 
people. Because they don't see what good a computer can do you - or bad.

It's the same with all these concepts I'm telling you about. You won't 
miss them if you don't know them. It's like with hardware tools. If you 
just know how to use hammer and nails, you can do A LOT. Even with those 
things you can't do with hammer and nails, you can improvise. But a 
screwdriver and screws are just neat.

Now, wouldn't you want a toolbox to be complete? Just hammer and nails 
suck. But add a screwdriver, screws, pliers, a monkeywrench, a soldering 
iron, a saw, an axe and some plasters and you have a pretty cool 
toolbox. You could still use hammer and nails for almost all of the 
things these tools allow you. It would just be pretty damn inconvenient 
and you will shoot yourself in the foot - possibly even literally!

And if you have a complete toolbox, you will never ever want to work 
with an almost empty toolbox again.  But of course, you must learn to 
use these tools. And you need to know when a nail is better than a screw 
and when it's the other way round.

> And most importantly:
> 
> How long did it take you to learn it ?
> 
> A week ?
> A month ?
> A year ?
> 

A day.

Ok, that was a lie. It took me two days.

There are still some things that are different from what I'm used to 
(I'm more used to Lisp, as you may have learned from my replies) but the 
guys and gals on this mailing list are actually pretty damn helpful once 
you learn to be nice and play by the rules.

>>From the looks of it I would almost say a year ! hahaha.
> 

Well, if you don't know the concepts it allows you to use, a year is 
hardly sufficient, I'd say. It takes a while to understand functional 
programming and object-oriented programming alone. Constraint 
programming may be completely beyond someone who has never played around 
with non-deterministic programming before or doesn't have a remote 
interest in quantum computing.

So, basically, I would say that an undergraduate training at your local 
university SHOULD get you started in these topics. Normally, that should 
be 2 to 3 years, depending on where you are from.

You don't want that? Fine. You don't have to.

But remember that saying:

For someone who just has a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail...

Hope that helps,

Jens


-- 
Jens Grabarske (Research), DFN-CERT Services GmbH
https://www.dfn-cert.de, +49 40 808077-621 / +49 40 808077-555 (Hotline)