On 12 December 2013 03:25, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 3:18 AM, Mark Lawrence <breamore...@yahoo.co.uk> > wrote: > > On 11/12/2013 16:04, Chris Angelico wrote: > >> > >> I strongly believe that a career > >> programmer should learn as many languages and styles as possible, but > >> most of them can wait. > > > > > > I chuckle every time I read this one. Five years per language, ten > > languages, that's 50 years I think. Or do I rewrite my diary for next > week, > > so I learn Smalltalk Monday morning, Ruby Monday afternoon, Julia Tuesday > > morning ... > > Well, I went exploring the Wikipedia list of languages [1] one day, > and found I had at least broad familiarity with about one in five. I'd > like to get that up to one in four, if only because four's a power of > two. > > More seriously: Once you've learned five of very different styles, it > won't take you five years to learn a sixth language. I picked up Pike > in about a weekend by realizing that it was "Python semantics meets C > syntax", and then went on to spend the next few years getting to know > its own idioms. I'd say anyone who knows a dozen languages should be > able to pick up any non-esoteric language in a weekend, at least to a > level of broad familiarity of being able to read and comprehend code > and make moderate changes to it. >
Absolutely. 10 years ago I was saying I'd forgotten at least 20 languages, and there have been many more since. Once you know enough programming languages you (and by "you" I mean "me") get to the point where if you don't know a specific language you can pick up enough to be useful in a day or two, reasonably proficient in a week, and have a fairly high level of mastery by the time you've finished whatever project you picked it up for. And then you don't use it for a while, forget it to make room for something else, and pick it up again when you need it (much faster this time). Except Prolog. Never could get my head around it - I should go back and have another try one of these days. Some languages stick with you (e.g. Python) and I don't tend to learn languages that are too similar to what I already know unless it's for a specific project. So I've never learned Ruby ... but I have had to modify a few Ruby scripts along the way, and been able to achieve what I wanted the same day. TimD elaney
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