My brain is now small

My brain is now smaller than the programming languages I use.

I started programming in 1976, on a PDP-8/e computer with timeshare BASIC. (Real BASIC, not this Visual Basic thing for wimps. BASIC has line numbers and variable names limited to a letter and an optional digit.)

Since then I have used various languages, operating systems, and environments. I've used HDOS, CP/M, and UCSD p-System on microcomputers (with BASIC, 8080 assembly language, and C), DECsystem-10s (with TOPS-10 and FORTRAN and Pascal), MS-DOS (with C and C++), and Windows (with C++, Java, Perl, and a few other languages).

In each case, I have struggled with the language (and run-time, and environment). The implementation has been the limiting factor. My efforts have been (mostly) beating the language/environment/implementation into submission to get the job done.

That has now changed.

I've been using the Ruby language for a few small projects. Not Ruby on Rails, which is the web framework that uses Ruby as the underlying language, but the Ruby language itself. It is a simple scripting language, like Perl or Python. It has a clean syntax and object-oriented concepts are baked in, not stuck on like in Perl. But that's not the most important point.

Ruby lets me get work done.

The language and run-time library are simple, elegant, and most importantly, capable. It lets me do work and stays out of my way. This is a pleasant change.

And somewhat frightening.

With Ruby, the limiting factor is not the language. The limiting factor is my programming skills. And while my programming skills are good, they are the result of working with stunted languages for the past thirty-odd years. The really neat stuff, the higher-order programming concepts, I have not learned, because the languages that I used could not support them.

Now I can.

I'm frightened, and excited.