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Too many people selling language courses? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6116 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes  Speaks: German* | Message 49 of 61 06 July 2011 at 1:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
It probably is smart on his part. But I do wonder why he has chosen to remain reticent on which languages he considers himself fluent in, both here and on his website. It appears to me that he is witholding an important piece of information, given that he fashions himself an expert in language learning. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5318 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 50 of 61 06 July 2011 at 5:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
George Bernard Shaw's famous quote from "Man and Superman" comes to mind:
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| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5694 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 51 of 61 06 July 2011 at 8:52am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Not to strain the metaphor further, but taking ten years to master a programming language would be akin to becoming a master writer in a natural language. Furthermore it doesn't take very much effort to transfer general programming knowledge to another language. As another computer scientist (student anyway) I must say, that claiming it takes 10 years to learn a programming language is stretching it a bit, even for pretty stringent values of "learn". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5342 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 52 of 61 06 July 2011 at 10:09am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Well look at the C++ language, you have the STL to master, you have pointers, and all that other C++0x stuff coming into it. While some transfers to others. But it does take quite a while to master. Depending on how big it is and how good you are at it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5189 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 53 of 61 06 July 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
To me the thing to master in C++ is the object oriented paradigm. That is a major conceptual change, akin to an English speaker getting the hang of pronomial verbs in Spanish or learning the tones of Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6917 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 54 of 61 06 July 2011 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Bottom line, whether computer languages or human languages, those with more experience usually tend to think that those with less experience do not know what they are talking about. I have translated professionally for almost 20 years. A colleague with only five years of experience recently published a textbook for translators. My first thought was what the f&&^ does she know after only five years?
If you have been studying a language for 20 years (human or computer), you will of course look upon those with only 5 years under their belt as beginners, but it may be that in some cases they know things you do not. Edited by translator2 on 06 July 2011 at 9:21pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5667 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 55 of 61 07 July 2011 at 12:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Plus, you have to actually be making at least some progress during that time, rather than just settling for what you have achieved and "treading water". I remember hearing somebody say about a job candidate: "He doesn't have 20 years of experience. He has one year of experience repeated 20 times." Edited by Splog on 07 July 2011 at 12:25am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6550 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 56 of 61 22 July 2011 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I have a degree in computer science and I don't think programming languages can be compared with real languages at all. Here's why:
1) Programming languages have been invented by people and they have a finite set of instructions/methods/definitions - which is a much much smaller set than all the words in a real language. The persons who invent a programming language have to build a compiler (it's a program that translates the programming language into machine code so the computer can understand it) before the language can be used by programmers and so a programmer doesn't need to learn more stuff than the compiler contains. It doesn't take anywhere near 10 years to do that, more like 1 year for a beginner or even just half a year if the person is dedicated and spends a lot of time practicing. 2) The concepts in all programming languages are similar. The biggest distinction probably is object-oriented versus not object-oriented but even then it's just one concept. The rest of them - variables, constants, functions, methods, parameters, arrays, loops, variable scope, SQL, etc... Once you know them you know them. The syntax and some details may differ in each programming language, as well as the names of particular functions, but the concepts are the same. Once you know one programming language well you shouldn't need more than a couple of months (half a year max) to adjust to a different one, which is not true for real languages. 3) The ultimate goal of studying a real language - native-like fluency - doesn't exist in programming languages. There may be thousands of classes or functions available in a programming language but you don't need to learn them all by heart, you only need to know a quick way of checking whether a particular function exists, how it is called and what the parameters are, and this is always easily available in documentation or on the internet. When you apply for a job as a programmer no one will ask you to name a hundred classes or functions to check your knowledge, it's simply not the way it works. Programmers are expected to know how to use a function, not to know all the functions there are. So comparing programming languages to real languages makes no sense to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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