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In case anyone isn't familiar with them, these two books[1][2] from the Pragmatic Programmer are great for doing just this. They offer a guided intro to 7 different languages each, and they're a whole lot of fun. [1] https://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-we... [2] https://pragprog.com/book/7lang/seven-more-languages-in-seve...
- The world, 2019
My suggestion is Objective-C. It's just so weird to anyone who's never coded in it, that it will force you out of your comfort zone into new ways of thinking. The NS framework is probably the most well designed stdlib of any language ever, and the whole thing is inspired directly from Smalltalk. Protocol Oriented Programming [0] was also a real revelation for me, and I still apply those concepts anywhere I can. It's…
At this point I have almost 20 languages that I've used for at least two years, which is what I consider an decent bar for "knowing" a language. The problem I now have is that I don't know if I'll ever be able to master any language anymore. Mmmmaybe C, since I've used that fairly consistently, albeit on-and-off for 25 years. But whenever I get to an "if" or "for" or function declaration, I often have to look at an e…
At this point I have almost 20 languages that I've used for at least two years, which is what I consider an decent bar for "knowing" a language. The problem I now have is that I don't know if I'll ever be able to master any language anymore. Mmmmaybe C, since I've used that fairly consistently, albeit on-and-off for 25 years. But whenever I get to an "if" or "for" or function declaration, I often have to look at an e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this is also to do that many people do not see developing software as a career; more something they happen to be ok at and it makes a bucket load of money. If it's a career, like I decided to make of it when I was 16, you can be an actual senior in a number of languages. I feel equally secure writing large codebases/projects in quite a substantial number of languages after 30 years of learning different languages…
Ahh the developer who drops how young they were when they started programming. I love this one.
The conceptual differences between a desktop GUI app, a command line app or a web app are much bigger than between say functionally similar web apps implemented in three different programming languages. A business app based on a relational database is fundamentally different from say a game, even if the language is the same.
But the main reason I do it is because I think it's just good fun :)
Frankly I've never understood the desire to be a polyglot. The time spent learning new syntax and a new standard library could have been spent learning libraries, algorithms, data structures, etc, so I don't think it's the most productive way to improve yourself as a programmer. I'm more interested in learning a new language because it lets me do something I couldn't do before.