I have always loved coding. It felt as if I were learning secret languages I could use to craft my own solutions to various problems. There was so much freedom in seeing an empty line that I could fill with instructions, rules, and attributes. I could craft worlds and games from those simple lines. I was around 13 years old when I first learned Python. Ever since then, I have been fascinated by learning as many programming languages as possible, because the language you choose shapes your solution and your thinking.
I got obsessed with finding niche programming languages just to challenge myself. My friends and I spent many school afternoons tinkering and using programming languages to tell new stories. Looking back, it wasn’t just Python or Java or C, or even C# or C++, that I was coding in; no, there was also Prolog, HTML, SQL, Pascal, Assembler, Delphi, and so many more. Each one of them brought joy and excitement (and many hours of debugging and surfing on StackOverflow 😅). And yet, each one of them taught me to think in different ways.
The parallels between programming languages and human languages
I am using this to show the parallels between programming languages and our natural languages. Just as each programming language needs a different approach or environment, our natural languages do, too. We cannot generalise all of them, as that would take away their uniqueness. I already think differently in English, German, Amharic, and French. Why are we trying so hard to make them all fit into the same box? If you look at the NLP Readiness Index we developed, you can clearly see that each language has a different starting point and attributes. So, why don’t we make sure that we celebrate the sheer number of languages that can describe the world we live in?
A call to action
And while we now have chatbots that do the coding for us, I would like to encourage everyone to find the joy of coding again, but for yourself. It seems that with the current advances, it is not about the art of coding anymore, but just efficiency and numbers. But to me, coding is an art form, and with every programming language (just like with every natural language) I know, I find more ways to express myself.
So, what are some of the programming languages that you know? 🤔
Credits & disclosure
Header image: "Deceptive Dialogues" by Nadia Nadesan, part of the Better Images of AI project. Nadia Nadesan & Digit / Deceptive Dialogues / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0
None of the text above was written or generated by AI.
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