---
product_id: 8089641
title: "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks"
price: "€ 60.57"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.at/products/8089641-seven-languages-in-seven-weeks
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---

# fast-paced learning 7 languages in 7 weeks deep paradigm insights Seven Languages in Seven Weeks

**Price:** € 60.57
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## Summary

> 🚀 Code Smarter, Not Harder: Unlock 7 Languages in 7 Weeks!

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Seven Languages in Seven Weeks
- **How much does it cost?** € 60.57 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.at](https://www.desertcart.at/products/8089641-seven-languages-in-seven-weeks)

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- Customers looking for quality international products

## Why This Product

- Free international shipping included
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## Key Features

- • **Pragmatic & Hands-On Approach:** Solve real problems to understand each language’s unique strengths.
- • **Accelerated Learning Framework:** Learn how to quickly grasp new languages beyond syntax and tutorials.
- • **Master 7 Cutting-Edge Languages:** From Ruby to Haskell, broaden your coding horizons in just weeks.
- • **Explore Diverse Programming Paradigms:** Dive into functional, logical, prototype, and concurrent models.
- • **Exclusive Interviews with Language Creators:** Gain insider perspectives from the minds behind the languages.

## Overview

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks offers a fast-track, hands-on exploration of seven influential programming languages—Clojure, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby—designed for experienced developers eager to expand their paradigm toolkit and learn how to quickly master new languages through practical problem-solving and expert insights.

## Description

You should learn a programming language every year, as recommended by The Pragmatic Programmer . But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages in Seven Weeks ? In this book you'll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is on that list, you'll broaden your perspective of programming by examining these languages side-by-side. You'll learn something new from each, and best of all, you'll learn how to learn a language quickly. Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. With Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate, you'll go beyond the syntax-and beyond the 20-minute tutorial you'll find someplace online. This book has an audacious goal: to present a meaningful exploration of seven languages within a single book. Rather than serve as a complete reference or installation guide, Seven Languages hits what's essential and unique about each language. Moreover, this approach will help teach you how to grok new languages. For each language, you'll solve a nontrivial problem, using techniques that show off the language's most important features. As the book proceeds, you'll discover the strengths and weaknesses of the languages, while dissecting the process of learning languages quickly--for example, finding the typing and programming models, decision structures, and how you interact with them. Among this group of seven, you'll explore the most critical programming models of our time. Learn the dynamic typing that makes Ruby, Python, and Perl so flexible and compelling. Understand the underlying prototype system that's at the heart of JavaScript. See how pattern matching in Prolog shaped the development of Scala and Erlang. Discover how pure functional programming in Haskell is different from the Lisp family of languages, including Clojure. Explore the concurrency techniques that are quickly becoming the backbone of a new generation of Internet applications. Find out how to use Erlang's let-it-crash philosophy for building fault-tolerant systems. Understand the actor model that drives concurrency design in Io and Scala. Learn how Clojure uses versioning to solve some of the most difficult concurrency problems. It's all here, all in one place. Use the concepts from one language to find creative solutions in another-or discover a language that may become one of your favorites.

Review: for experienced developers - I find this book to be a lot like "Programming Collective Intelligence" in that it introduces you to new concepts for even experienced developers. You're expected to know a lot about programming already, but as it's introducing new concepts, it gives you enough background to follow along, but not so much detail that you're bored. It also has a couple of different sections for each language, including short interviews with the language designers. You can learn ruby anywhere, but it's going to take you a while to find out what makes it unique, whereas this book gets right to what's important, with no boringness. You can get through one language a day, or faster if you don't bother trying to do the examples or questions, but those were well-chosen. The book is a little too playful at times (describing Ruby as like Mary Poppins), but it's entertaining and makes it less dry (ex. in a description of a possible mistake someone might make when programming Io it states "If that line of code is buried deeply into a complex package, Io just puked in your car.").
Review: Much (perhaps over) anticipated - Background: I stumbled across the author's blog post announcing his intention to write the book while looking for materials comparing language paradigms instead of particular languages (object-oriented, logical, functional, prototype, etc). The as yet unwritten book sounded like exactly what I was after (thus my enthusiastic anticipation). I purchased an electronic copy of this book from the Prag Press beta program about six months ago and began reading the chapters as they were completed and released. My paper copy just arrived from desertcart today. Thus I can comment on the whole content of the book and the physical object. Languages: While the languages covered (Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell) are excitingly (painfully?) trendy the list is not without merit. In the introduction the author explains that he arrived at the list by asking readers and edited from there: swapping Io for JavaScript and excluding Python thereby making room for Prolog. One could debate the choice of Io over JavaScript (particularly in a post Node.js / Common.js world) and make a case for including Smalltalk as the canonical OO language over Ruby; however, the chosen languages each bring something to the book and represent a number of interesting paradigms. Chapters: Each language has its own chapter. Each chapter has five sections: - an introduction to the language covering topics like it's history, place in the modern language landscape, paradigm, etc - 'Day 1' - 'Day 2' - 'Day 3' - and a conclusion with a few parting words / 'the moral of the story is...'. The boundaries between days are not particularly meaningful but roughly build from "here's the syntax" to "here's an interesting thing you can do with this paradigm". By Day 3 each chapter has moved beyond trivial "hello world" examples; not surprisingly then, the pace of progress is brisk and the details of how to get up and running with each language are largely left to the reader. Each language chapter includes an interview with a user/creator of the language (Matz, Steve Dekorte, Brian Tarbox, Martin Odersky, Joe Armstrong, Rich Hickey, Philip Wadler / Simon Peyton-Jones). These were an unexpected addition and quite worth reading. In fact, I wish the interviews had been longer and gone into more technical detail. In addition to the seven language chapters there is an introductory chapter that has the sort of information normally found in the pre-page-numbering introduction to a book (explanation of the book's contents, intended audience etc) and an excellent final wrap-up chapter (more on it later). Length: I easily completed each language chapter in a weekend. The first and last chapters are very quick reads. Seven weeks should be more than enough time to work through the book. Subjective annoyances: - The quality of the physical book (not great) will be familiar to regular Prag Programmer shoppers. It is not up to O'Reilly standards (it's more like an Apress book). Although the typesetting is easy to read the top and bottom margins are unpleasantly tight. The outside margin leaves room for notes which I like, but the book is awkwardly square. For $22 what does one expect? - Each chapter attempts creativity with a supposedly allegorical popular culture reference threaded through it (ex: Io = Ferris Bueller). I found these more distracting than informative. I'd include naming the chapter sections "day n" as similarly failed attempts and wish that instead attempting wit (ex Io Day1: An Excellent Driver) they had substantive names. Obviously this is totally personal opinion, you might like it. Outright Disappointment: I wish that the individual chapters went into significantly more depth comparing the motivations for and consequences of each language design. While the key features of each language are demonstrated with annotated code samples and explanatory text little is offered in the way of discussion comparing across language. For example the Scala chapter (selected at random) is on pages 121-166 in the index under "Scala" the only references outside its own chapter are found on pages 302, 303, 305-306, and 308 (all in the final wrap-up chapter). I view this as a real missed opportunity given the books unique approach/content. The final wrap-up chapter seems to be the only place with this sort of cross-language discussion and as a result it is both excellent and much too short. Conclusion: An interesting book that I enjoyed reading and expect to return to in the future. The physical book is of so-so quality and as such the electronic book may be the right product for you to buy. The missed opportunity (and loss star) are for a disappointing failure to draw cross-language comparisons within the text of each chapter. ---------- Update: [...]is a 45 min talk on the book / topics in the book.

## Features

- Used Book in Good Condition

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,148,334 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #721 in Software Design & Engineering #792 in Introductory & Beginning Programming #1,641 in Software Development (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.3 out of 5 stars 185 Reviews |

## Images

![Seven Languages in Seven Weeks - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71RmvIx66hL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ for experienced developers
*by S***R on November 28, 2010*

I find this book to be a lot like "Programming Collective Intelligence" in that it introduces you to new concepts for even experienced developers. You're expected to know a lot about programming already, but as it's introducing new concepts, it gives you enough background to follow along, but not so much detail that you're bored. It also has a couple of different sections for each language, including short interviews with the language designers. You can learn ruby anywhere, but it's going to take you a while to find out what makes it unique, whereas this book gets right to what's important, with no boringness. You can get through one language a day, or faster if you don't bother trying to do the examples or questions, but those were well-chosen. The book is a little too playful at times (describing Ruby as like Mary Poppins), but it's entertaining and makes it less dry (ex. in a description of a possible mistake someone might make when programming Io it states "If that line of code is buried deeply into a complex package, Io just puked in your car.").

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Much (perhaps over) anticipated
*by M***T on November 9, 2010*

Background: I stumbled across the author's blog post announcing his intention to write the book while looking for materials comparing language paradigms instead of particular languages (object-oriented, logical, functional, prototype, etc). The as yet unwritten book sounded like exactly what I was after (thus my enthusiastic anticipation). I purchased an electronic copy of this book from the Prag Press beta program about six months ago and began reading the chapters as they were completed and released. My paper copy just arrived from Amazon today. Thus I can comment on the whole content of the book and the physical object. Languages: While the languages covered (Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell) are excitingly (painfully?) trendy the list is not without merit. In the introduction the author explains that he arrived at the list by asking readers and edited from there: swapping Io for JavaScript and excluding Python thereby making room for Prolog. One could debate the choice of Io over JavaScript (particularly in a post Node.js / Common.js world) and make a case for including Smalltalk as the canonical OO language over Ruby; however, the chosen languages each bring something to the book and represent a number of interesting paradigms. Chapters: Each language has its own chapter. Each chapter has five sections: - an introduction to the language covering topics like it's history, place in the modern language landscape, paradigm, etc - 'Day 1' - 'Day 2' - 'Day 3' - and a conclusion with a few parting words / 'the moral of the story is...'. The boundaries between days are not particularly meaningful but roughly build from "here's the syntax" to "here's an interesting thing you can do with this paradigm". By Day 3 each chapter has moved beyond trivial "hello world" examples; not surprisingly then, the pace of progress is brisk and the details of how to get up and running with each language are largely left to the reader. Each language chapter includes an interview with a user/creator of the language (Matz, Steve Dekorte, Brian Tarbox, Martin Odersky, Joe Armstrong, Rich Hickey, Philip Wadler / Simon Peyton-Jones). These were an unexpected addition and quite worth reading. In fact, I wish the interviews had been longer and gone into more technical detail. In addition to the seven language chapters there is an introductory chapter that has the sort of information normally found in the pre-page-numbering introduction to a book (explanation of the book's contents, intended audience etc) and an excellent final wrap-up chapter (more on it later). Length: I easily completed each language chapter in a weekend. The first and last chapters are very quick reads. Seven weeks should be more than enough time to work through the book. Subjective annoyances: - The quality of the physical book (not great) will be familiar to regular Prag Programmer shoppers. It is not up to O'Reilly standards (it's more like an Apress book). Although the typesetting is easy to read the top and bottom margins are unpleasantly tight. The outside margin leaves room for notes which I like, but the book is awkwardly square. For $22 what does one expect? - Each chapter attempts creativity with a supposedly allegorical popular culture reference threaded through it (ex: Io = Ferris Bueller). I found these more distracting than informative. I'd include naming the chapter sections "day n" as similarly failed attempts and wish that instead attempting wit (ex Io Day1: An Excellent Driver) they had substantive names. Obviously this is totally personal opinion, you might like it. Outright Disappointment: I wish that the individual chapters went into significantly more depth comparing the motivations for and consequences of each language design. While the key features of each language are demonstrated with annotated code samples and explanatory text little is offered in the way of discussion comparing across language. For example the Scala chapter (selected at random) is on pages 121-166 in the index under "Scala" the only references outside its own chapter are found on pages 302, 303, 305-306, and 308 (all in the final wrap-up chapter). I view this as a real missed opportunity given the books unique approach/content. The final wrap-up chapter seems to be the only place with this sort of cross-language discussion and as a result it is both excellent and much too short. Conclusion: An interesting book that I enjoyed reading and expect to return to in the future. The physical book is of so-so quality and as such the electronic book may be the right product for you to buy. The missed opportunity (and loss star) are for a disappointing failure to draw cross-language comparisons within the text of each chapter. ---------- Update: [...]is a 45 min talk on the book / topics in the book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A For Effort
*by W***N on April 10, 2011*

Bruce Tate does an amazing job cutting to the heart of what makes seven programming languages special in about 50 pages each. He is also pretty honest about the limitations of each. I had a great time working through the seven chapters and learned a lot. At the start of each chapter, you have to figure out how to download and install a compiler/interpreter for your os. The book does not cover that part of the process which is fair enough. Then, each chapter contains a series of simple, complete, well-paced examples. Type them in, and be amazed how much you learn in 50 pages. This book is not (and never claims to be) a comprehensive introduction to any of the languages. In some sense it is better as it shows the strength of each, almost like an advertisement. He is trying to get you excited about each language. Going into this book, I had some familiarity with Ruby and Haskell but knew virtually nothing about any of the other five. On the two languages I had used before, those chapters were solid and I even learned a few things. Of the other five, Tate did his job and got me excited about Io. Since reading that chapter, I have been diving in to Io. The others were interesting, but Io caught my attention. The book is a little heavy on the functional languages: Erlang, Scala, and Haskell. Given that I am already Haskell fan, the Erlang and Scala chapters felt like a missed opportunity to me. Of course, everyone who reads the book would probably want a different list of seven.

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*Last updated: 2026-08-24*