How Programming Languages Change How You Think

This might be a weird article.

A few years ago I saw the terrific movie “Arrival” and it changed how I look at language. A little later, I encountered F# for the first time and it changed the way I look at programming languages.

In this article I’m going to walk you through the basics of some of the theories touched upon in Arrival and then pivot into the role of language in programming. We’ll compare and contrast a number of languages and see how they impact how we think about solving problems in software engineering before…