alt Hacker NewsI think that it helps a lot to have a daily practice of using a language for small things.
In much that same way that many people do the daily wordle or crossword, I do the daily leetcode.
I flip a coin and solve it first in either C++ or Python, then re-write my solution in the other one.
Usually it takes me around 20 minutes to solve it in either language, and 5 minutes to re-solve it in either language.
Recently I decided to start learning emacs lisp. This is an imperative lisp dialect that’s pretty different from scheme, but I think that the particular language doesn’t matter much for this process. I could a bit biased because I do have prior experience with SML and scheme.
I started re-solving the problems a third time in emacs lisp. And I’m still learning but I’ve felt my comfort with the language increase over time, and I expect that if I continue doing this then I will eventually reach parity with C++ and Python.
Currently it takes me about 20 minutes to re-solve a problem in emacs lisp, because I usually have to read documentation and/or look up something new.
Replies
Where do you find a daily leetcode problem? Is there a website somewhere that publishes them?
How did you arrive at C++ and Python? Yes I'm aware they have many structural and aesthetic differences, but why would you not choose a language with a different paradigm—functional, logical, even procedural, etc?
> I could a bit biased because I do have prior experience with SML
You're probably under-weighing this factor.
The average programmer looks at SML syntax and cannot make, pardon the expression if you will, heads or tails of it.
Indeed, I'd argue the average programmer still considers recursion an advanced topic.