Thought about Program Language

I have read an article which talks about the program language.It impressed me so much. The author told a story about he has written a startup by Lisp,and explained why people say Lisp is the most powerful language. He said: the programming languages are not just technology,but what programmers think in.They are half technology and half religion. I really agree with her.

Programming language affect you thinking. When you have a problem,naturally you want to solve by you familiar language. Sometime it isn't the optima,even it's the worst solution. Each language have some good features. I'm familiar with java.So when I have a problem, spontaneous thinking is try to find a solution with java style. Because I don't familiar with other language, so I can't find another way to deal with the problem. It's my dead spot. But when I learned a little Shell, I can get thing done with Shell. Sometimes it's more simple and compact than with java. It give me an chance to think problem from other side. it's very valuable. In this lesson, I learned that the more you know,the wider you can think. The Lisp have more powerful feature than others. If you are skilled in Lisp you know more tips than you can get from other languages.

But wait a minute. Sometime the knowledge isn't good for you thinking. There is a saying:if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The familiar language( or knowledge) can affect you thought,sometimes it bring you to the wrong road. You have a problem,you want to use you knowledge to solve it. You just want to solve the problem with familiar knowledge,even make people don't thing the essential of the problem. But we must have some knowledge to get things done. How to avoid this thinking dead spot? I think it would be Critical Thinking.When we learning a language or things, we should ask some questions:what it's advantage,what it's disadvantage,what things it hold good for, what things it isn't applicable. If we know that, we can do the right things with right tools.