TITLE: Why Bother With Specialty Languages?
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 02, 2016  4:45 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
In
<A HREF="http://wordaligned.org/articles/sledgehammers-vs-nut-crackers">
   Sledgehammers vs Nut Crackers</A>,
Thomas Guest talks about pulling awk of the shelf to solve a
fun little string-processing problem.  He then shows a solution
in Python, one of his preferred general-purpose programming
languages.  Why bother with languages like awk when you have
Python at the ready?  Guest writes:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 At the outset of this post I admitted I don't generally
 bother with awk.  Sometimes, though, I encounter the
 language and need to read and possibly adapt an existing
 script.  So that's one reason to bother.  Another reason
 is that it's elegant and compact.  Studying its operation
 and motivation may help us compose and factor our own
 programs -- programs far more substantial than the
 scripts presented here, and in which there will surely
 be places for mini-languages of our own.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

As I watch some of my students struggle this semester to
master Racket, recursive programming, and functional style,
I offer them hope that learning a new language and a new
style will make them better Python and Java programmers,
even if they never write another Racket or Lisp program
again.  The more different ways we know how to think about
problems and solutions, the more effective we can be as
solvers of problems.  Of course, Racket isn't a special
purpose language, and a few students find they so like
the new style that they stick with the language as their
preferred tool.

Experienced programmers understand what Guest is saying,
but in the trenches of learning, it can be hard to
appreciate the value of knowing different languages and
being able to think in different ways.  My sledgehammer
works fine, my students say; why am I learning to use a
nutcracker?  I have felt that sensation myself.

I try to keep this feeling in mind as my students work
hard to master a new way of thinking.  This helps me
empathize with their struggle, all the while knowing
that Racket will shape how some of them think about
every program they write in the future.
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