Two weeks ago I made the committed to Start Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate. The book covers Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. I’m hoping by me blogging about my progress it will help keep me consistently focused on the task at hand, learning NEW languages and completing this book! I have a lot of blog ideas that are currently in the mix, BUT have to stay focused.

This week I wrapped up chapter two on Ruby and started chapter three on Io language. I fell a bit short the first week but completed the week of Ruby. I do still have a few Ruby sessions I’d like to revisit next from Tekpub and PeepCode.

What is Io? In two words, a prototype language. Steve Dekrote invented Io language in 2002. Io is a prototype language like Lua and JavaScript, meaning every object is a clone of another.

Quick Taste: Create a Train object, then create Steamy and Diesel from the Train object.

1. Create the Train object, Train := Object
2. Create a name property on the Train object, Train name := "base name"
3. Create the Steamy object from Train, Steamy := Train
4. Change the name of the Steamy object, `Steam name = “Thomas”
5. Create the Diesel object from Train, Diesel := Train
6. Change the name of the Diesel object, `Diesel name = “Diesel”
7. View the name of Train, Steamy name
8. View the name of Steamy, Steamy name
9. View the name of Diesel, Steamy name

What have I accomplished after week two?

1. Completed Book Chapters 1-2 on Ruby.
2. Completed Book Chapters 3 Day 1 on Io. Started on Day 2.
3. Installed Io on my linux machine to work through the examples from Day 1.
4. Visited iolanguage.com and reviewed a bit of the documentation.

Again, I have some catching up to do this week. The plan is to get through the rest of Chapter 3 on Io this week. Then tackle Chapter 4 next week on Prolog.