#like. i've used functional programming languages like racket and haskell

[gayarograce]

yknow, lambda calculus is something that, since i've found out about it, i wish i could actually wrap my head around, but try as i might i just can't quite fully understand using it

[not-toivo]

So, a month ago I finally got a job as a frontend dev, so, hooray,🥳, I now get to enjoy ✨Vue✨ and ✨Nuxt✨ 5 days a week and get paid for that. But since I've been unemployed for a very long time, this sudden change means that I'm even more tired to learn new things in my spare time, and also that there isn't much spare time now. I haven't posted much here before and so it seems I'm unlikely to be more active here in the future. Sad.

I did, though, try to read the 1st book on the list from the website Teach Yourself Computer Science, the one called Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (the reason for me to do that is because I don't have any STEM background, and, I guess, if I want to continue a career in a sphere rapidly encroached by AI, it's good to have some fundamental knowledge). I read about a ⅕ of the book, finally understood what it means for Haskell to be called a "lazy" language, but the exercises at the end of the chapters are too hard and math-heavy for me. Also, sad.

The book uses a programming language from the LISP family, called Scheme. I thought I could get by by installing Clojure instead, but that journey ended with the VS Code extension for Clojure, called Calva slowing down and then completely corrupting (?) WSL connection, so that I had then to reinstall my WSL "instance". (Yes, I use Windows, because I'm not a programmer). Which is sad, because the extension looked good and feature-heavy, it just couldn't function well in WSL environment for some reason…

After that, I installed Racket (another LISP) on the freshly reinstalled WSL distro, but then I couldn't pick up the book again and continue learning for, like, a week and a half, which is where I am at now. (Racket allows to define arbitrary syntax/semantics for the compiler, which in turn allows developers to create new domain specific languages distributed simply as Racket packages, with one of those packages being the dialect of Scheme used by SICP, the book mentioned earlier).

There is also the PureScript book, Functional Programming Made Easier by Charles Scalfani, which I'm unlikely to finish ever. The language is neat (it's very similar to Haskell, but compiles to JavaScript), but a bit overcomplicated for a simple goal of making interfaces. I do think, however, that I might try learning Elm at some point: the amount of time I've spent at work, trying to understand, why and at what point the state of some component mutated in a Nuxt app is, honestly, impressive, and I want to try something built around the idea of immutability.