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i'm rephrasing my question as it is deemed too opinion based. I will try to be more specific this time.
I wish to learn programming languages to expand my way of thinking and expressing problems:
Here are some background. My purposes for learning specific languages.
Scala as an OO-Functional hybrid for reactive programming
Clojure as a Lisp dialect for experiencing the power of macros
Note that Scala being statically typed and Clojure being dynamic is a bonus for me as i get to learn their pros and cons at the same time
What are the things to pay attention to in the process of learning Prolog that would help me think better?
So far, my research suggests that one of the most powerful feature of Prolog is its ease of implementing "Backtracking".
previous Version:
I figured I should learn prolog to add to my arsenal of programming.
But what is the essence of prolog? As in, what are the main features
and what should I expect to take away from the experience?
It would be nice to compare to Scala and Clojure as they're my
language of choice at the moment. I'm learning Scala mainly for actor
model/reactive programming, and the OO and functional approaches seem
really powerful to me. I took up Clojure because I wanted to pick up a
Lisp dialect to experience the power of macros, and so far, Clojure
had the most momentum. So what extras would Prolog give me?
Can I get those benefits/experience/features in Erlang since it's
syntax is derived from Prolog?
Thanks for looking at my question. Hope to hear all those wonderful
answers.
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Basically, what I'm asking is, when people say that learning Lisp will enlighten you, are they just talking about learning functional programming in general or is there some deeper benefit?
Personally, and I'm sure most people feel like this, I'm quite scared by the syntax. I feel like it gets in the way and I don't see the benefit in having all expressions look the same. Never had a problem interpreting expressions in a language...
However, Haskell was a beast as well, but after learning it I can confirm that I approach problems differently and that it was a worthwhile experience.
So, the question is. Is it worth it? What does Lisp offer that NO other languages offer? I know people are eager to promote the language they use, but if there are other languages that took the good parts of Lisp and incorporated them in a more manageable form, then I don't see a reason to learn Lisp specifically.
Lisp is the programmable programming language
Lisp offers something no other language does - "code is data".
This means that the code you write is a list which can be processed by Lisp.
This leads to a powerful macro facility, which means that you have the full power of Lisp itself at macroexpansion time.
Far more from merely adding new syntactic constructs like with-something, one can define a whole DSL in a few forms.
More information:
Examples of what Lisp's macros can be used for
Lisp Macro
Macros: Defining Your Own
http://weitz.de/macros.lisp
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Question Context: Where there is an exiting Java application or a new project development that is to be written in mostly Java.
We know that we can use Scala from Java and vice versa.
What specific system features are more suited for functional programming. I mean I wouldn't use Scala just because it has a nice feature of executing a passed-in function implementation over the items of a collection nor would I use Scala just for its object orientation capabilities I would just use Java for that.
So going beyond the nice and interesting features of Scala what set of system features make a compelling case to use Scala on a Java project?
where to start, and where to end?
pattern matching
case classes
functions (and higher order ones)
great collections
more object oriented than java, avoid common anti-patterns
type inference -> much less noise
many great options in concurrency. Futures in Java are just so useless compared to Scala ones
traits for composing services
Testing with ScalaTest+ScalaCheck is much much better than JUnit/TestNG/
Akka !
The list is just too long.
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I would like to learn about polytypic concepts in Scala, I came across shapeless library what would be the best starting point for learning and applying shapeless.
I don't know if thats an answer you wan't, but the best push for me to start learning/using shapeless was a couple of Miles videos from different Scala conferences :
From flatmap
ScalaNE 2012
ScalaNE 2013
His forgotten blog
And as a big practise - i'm writing a lot using Spray toolkit, it uses shapeless inside. So try to write some web server or some client.
Also a github's wiki contains good intro for the library.
Great idea - try to rewrite some case classes into shapeless records with hlists, it's pretty cool to use it with some JSON converter =). Much of it is some generic kind of stuff wich is not very useful in real project, but if you want better understanding of type level programming, it's really great stuff
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I started learning CLISP. Should I improve my self. What can be done with this programming language? What's it for. I'd appreciate your answers and comments. Thanks.
Common Lisp, of which CLisp is an implementation, is a general purpose language. You can do with it whatever you want. For a nice, practical introduction, take a look at Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel.
Judging by your comment you're looking for ideas to implement using Common Lisp.
It seems lots of people nowadays are using Project Euler to try out a language: it's a source of fun, small problems that lets you learn some maths too.
Failing that, find an itch that you have - a program that you need - and write that in Common Lisp.
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I've seen quite a few books about Scala, but those are so similar to each other. Wonder what titles (related to Scala) would you like to see that would differ from "main stream"?
At this point, all Scala books are about teaching Scala. That's natural, as most readers won't be familiar with Scala.
As time passes, we'll likely need books with Scala Patterns (which can be very different from Java patterns) and anti-Patterns, coding tips, advanced algorithms, or topic-specific, like concurrency or strategic programming.
The Lift book kind of fits in the category of topic-specific, but it is really much more about the Lift library and Lift usage than about general Scala usage for web programming.
Another topic-specific book on the way is "actors in scala" - which was mentioned at the Scala BASE meetup - currently being authored (or co-authored at least) by Martin Odersky.
The actors framework offers a substantially new concurrency model (pioneered in Erlang) that aims to make writing concurrent code easier than traditional shared state concurrency, as well as offering better scalability for multi-core architectures.
One important thing we don't yet have is an entry-level book, suitable for Scala as a first language, rather than as a next step after Java, assuming some familiarity with the JVM APIs and the syntax of Java.
At the moment there is not a text on the language that I could really recommend to a bright youngster (late teens) who wants to start programming with something better than the Hobson's choice of Pascal available in the IT classes at school -- not that any of the other (quasi-)functional languages are in much better state.