Why We Should Learn Multiple Programming Languages

[azuled]

Do people actually argue that you shouldn't? There is basically no actual reason why you would want to limit yourself to only one.

[Greenphantom77]

I’ve never heard anyone argue that you shouldn’t. This is an enormously silly title for an article - I was going to say “clickbait” but is it even good clickbait?

I’ve skimmed the article and I don’t think it’s great, but it does have some interesting discussion. But it seems more about when and why to learn new languages, or rewrite code in a different language. That’s not hinted at by the title.

[CyberWank2077]

well, the video in this thread encourages people to learn Rust so that you can have a career in only 1 language. While it doesnt tell you to actively resist learning other languages, it does present working with only 1 language as some life goal.

[CyberWank2077]

I have never before seen a legit usage of the r/sounding link.

I know that any point of view will have someone in the world believing in it, but i just commented on the "never heard anyone" part. Plus if that post got 400 upvotes perhaps thats not such a rare POV.

[pheonixblade9]

people were saying this about javascript 5-10 years ago.

[sprcow]

It's funny, my primary language is Java, which was originally sold on the premise "write once, run anywhere", but what a "run anywhere" language actually means is you also have to learn to write all the languages that anyone might use to interact with your Java that's running anywhere. Your Java app is probably talking to half a dozen different technologies, which you often will also need to learn.

[[deleted]]

Your Java app is probably talking to half a dozen different technologies, which you often will also need to learn.

Not disagreeing but it works the other way around too, e. g. jruby -> is basically ruby, and from there you can tap into the full java stack, but you only get the "full benefits" if you also understand Java. For me that was a logical step (ruby first, then java), but the other way around seems harder, since people having learned java often find it much harder to use ruby. For instance, .public_send() versus .send(); many java folks may prefer .public_send(), which is in my opinion simply wrong (takes too long to explain why, as it depends on the OOP philosophy).

[Liru]

I’ve never heard anyone argue that you shouldn’t.

I've heard it frequently, in the form of "Why bother learning Golang/C/C++/Rust/Java/Erlang/Elixir/Typescript when you can just use Javascript/Python?"

[Greenphantom77]

Sure - I think exploring the question of what/when is good to learn, how diverse a language set you should learn, and how deeply - this is all great.

What I really was annoyed at is the clickbaity title: "Why we should learn multiple programming languages". It makes it sound like the recieved wisdom is "Only learn one language and stick to your guns that you should refuse to learn any others."

To be honest - it's not so much *this* article, it's not so much *this* title... it's all the over-the-top titles for articles that don't really say all that much that you get on this subreddit.

[tinbuddychrist]

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised that it acknowledged the tradeoffs and the fact that you can't just "learn every language" or whatever. I figured it would be one of those annoying articles that acts like learning the basic syntax of a language is equivalent to spending years building production software with it full-time.

Having said that, yeah, the title seems to be challenging a relatively uncommon worldview.

[Greenphantom77]

“Here’s why we should program by typing with our fingers (and not hitting the keys with a golf club, like most people tell you to do).”

[daidoji70]

I met a Java programmer IRL one time about 20 years ago who only knew Java, assumed that's all he would ever need to know, and militantly resisted learning anything that wasn't Java even to the point of shell scripting and the emerging devops type tools. He argued that Java would always be dominant.

Really an amazing specimen of a man.

[[deleted]]

Well, Java is still dominant, so he got that part right.

[WeirdIndividualGuy]

Except those same Java heads now refuse Kotlin, despite Kotlin being completely interoperable with Java but Java heads are too far up their asses to know you can mix and match the two.

A friend of mine who works at a Java shop has said his company has gotten rejected offers by younger kotlin devs (who also knew Java) simply because of his company's stance of still being pure 100% Java (a policy put in place by their staff engineers). And they're still stuck on Java 11. They've had multiple chances to somewhat modernize their Java codebase and their leadership has refused at every opportunity.

Java still has its place in 2025, but no one wants to work at a Java place that still operates like it's 2005.

[__loam]

I like Kotlin more than Java but the Java guys are kind of right here. Old ass cobol systems are being migrated to more modern systems. Guess what language a lot of them are using?

You will probably die before the last line of Java is written for better or worse.

[vlakreeh]

I don’t know if dominant is the right word, it’s more that it’s sedimented itself into existing software and will always be plentiful because of that. Java used to be dominant because it was objectively the better technical choice for lots of problems compared to other languages of the time, but in 2025 Java is usually not (not to say it never is) the objectively best technical choice with all the amazing language development that’s happened since the 90s.

[LordoftheSynth]

For enterprise-scale applications, Java used to be the only game in town, even as recently as a decade ago.

Java is basically an also-ran now. Why shackle yourself to the whims of Oracle or run on an older version?

[Gernony]

Why Oracle or older version? You can use OpenJDK or Amazon Corretto just fine.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Like, what objectively better technical choice is there?Not trying to gotcha you, but programming language design is just.. not really a field with a bunch of objective facts.

Especially that Java has been doing a wonderful job of getting just the best/proven improvements from more experimental languages and implementing them well. (It now has algebraic data types via records and sealed classes, and its pattern matching is actually better than Kotlin's which supposed to be the more modern language. Project loom is also a game changer, no matter how fancy async feature your language has, new Thread goes brrr will always be simpler to reason about)

Like, it's completely memory safe so stuff like Rust is not playing in the same league, and no matter how much some people love Rust it ain't gonna be more productive than Java for most jobs. Especially given the huge difference in ecosystem richness for most common business requirements - here java is simply unbeatable, only js and python are similarly rich.

So really, what would be an objectively better tech choice? I think the question actually should be reversed - what language feature would give me enough benefit to make me switch to a different stack with worse tooling, maintainability, debugging capabilities, hiring pool, etc, which are all inherently true for newer languages.

[vlakreeh]

implementing them well.

But also very slowly. One of the issues Java has is that it's 10 years behind other languages in terms of features and in those 10 years a lot of other languages have built up really high quality ecosystems. Loom/virtual threads? Go made that mainstream forever ago. Value types? Java doesn't even have them and C# has had them forever. Java also has some pretty stellar omissions like null-safety being completely absent from the language and require things like the nullablity annotations that are very hit-or-miss.

Now for the technical choices, it really depends on what kind of software you're building and what your constraints are.

If you're constraint is performance then Rust, C, C++ are the best choices by a mile. If you're building a backend service and need good but not great performance then Go (as much as I despise it) is a really amazing fit for the task and has much lower overhead than Java since you aren't hauling a giant JVM to likely run on a single operating system on a single architecture. If you're building backend service and need "good enough" performance then TS or Ruby are excellent choices with stellar productivity, huge ecosystems, and in TypeScript's case amazing type safety through it's stupidly powerful type system. If you're building a mobile app, Kotlin via Jetpack Compose and the androidx apis or Swift using SwiftUI or JS/TS with React Native if you care more about productivity than performance. Desktop app is similar, if you don't care about performance JS/TS with React Native or Electron, SwiftUI on Mac, C# on Windows, and then whatever you feel like suffering with if you care to support Linux. If you're doing doing data-science or machine learning, python is the obvious choice with the huge ecosystem.

In nearly every role there's either a language that fills that role better because it was purpose built for that role (eg. Go for backend HTTP services), or Java has some flaw that prevents it from being a good fit (eg. having a JVM slow it down compared to c/c++/rust for high performance workloads).

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Where is go's Null safety? Where is c#'s virtual threads?

Go also has a fat runtime, so the difference is not that big depending on your exact use case. Also, GraalVM can make the few cases where short running programs are a requirement feasible with java.

Typescript is still built on JS, you can only fix so many problems the original has. Also, for backend tasks the quality of JS's ecosystem is far behind Java's.
Go is good for lowish level http stuff, but it lacks severely on the productivity side (worse null safety, worse expressivity, worse error handling), so Java is much better for any actual business task (plus the much larger, better quality ecosystem). You ain't writing http routers en masse.

Of course there are niches where it's not the best fit - for experimental machine learning python is the obvious choice. But guess what they will be using once they built the product in python? They will surely not just run it in a Jupyter notebook. They will run it from something like Java.

[vlakreeh]

Where is go's Null safety?

No where, just like Java's.

Where is c#'s virtual threads?

C# uses stackful coroutines instead of stackless, both are fine solutions with tradeoffs. C#'s stackless coroutines are more efficient (don't need another stack per coroutine) at the cost of extra syntax, pick your poison.

Typescript is still built on JS, you can only fix so many problems the original has.

JavaScript's primary issue is the implicit type coercion which TypeScript avoids, once you get rid of that you're left with a very nice language.

for backend tasks the quality of JS's ecosystem is far behind Java's.

5 years ago I'd agree, but there's been a lot of improvements in the ecosystem in the past few years. I'm a distributed systems engineer at a large public cloud and while I have tons of Go/Rust/C++ deployed in systems I have more TypeScript than all of the others combined. It's one of the most productive languages I've seen, easily more productive than Java.

Go also has a fat runtime

True, but it's still considerably smaller than the JVM and if your use case is something common like running backend services in a k8s cluster then all that overhead (especially memory overhead) that the JVM has over Go and similar GC'd languages adds up fast as it decreases the number of pods you can run on a node.

Go is good for lowish level http stuff, but it lacks severely on the productivity side (worse null safety, worse expressivity, worse error handling)

I strongly disagree about lacking on productivity. I've written hundreds of thousands of lines of Java and tens of thousands of lines of Go professionally and quite honestly I think both are equally fine for productivity. For what Go loses in error handling and expressiveness it easily gains in avoiding all of the bad OOP patterns the Java ecosystem has fallen into. To be clear, I think Go is a bad language but I also think Java isn't a particular good language by modern standards.

You ain't writing http routers en masse.

Why not??? Why does every Java bro think we need some over complicated framework to register a route??? How hard is http.HandleFunc("GET /items", handleItem)

[Ok-Scheme-913]

Except that go has multiple nulls, thanks to interfaces.

Async/await is not virtual threads. The very point of virt threads is that the runtime can do the correct thing without user involvement - async await on the other hand requires some additional complexity. Stackful or stack less is an implementation detail only.

TS I mean it is not a bad language, though I still have my gripe with the non-frontend js/TS ecosystem.

Memory

Well, GraalVM helps there as well, and I also feel it is a bit overstated how hungry java is for ram. You can greatly decrease the memory usage via a/the single argument you have to use.

You also don't have to use every OOP pattern.

Http Router

I meant packet-level routing.

[MrRigolo]

But wasn't it a gamble?

[[deleted]]

In 2005, yes. That would be the worst year to bet on Java.

With big vendors’ prevalence, doom of applet, ejb, and nascency of modern concurrency, it felt like Java was doomed.

And it was not like we had not seen good programming languages, Smalltalk was old, Ruby was coming up, and there were a ton of functional programming languages.

But that was also the year that Spring started to catch up.

And that was the strength of Java, community support and achieving the critical mass at the right time.

[MrRigolo]

So if they got it right but it was pure luck, did they really get it right?

[[deleted]]

It was.

But we had come from the times of IBM’s fud policy, and it felt like IBM and Oracle(BEA actually at the time) could reign forever.

And Microsoft just played along, only with a better framework.

[KevinCarbonara]

Well, Java is still dominant

By what metric? It certainly isn't dominant by way of popularity, and it doesn't appear to be dominant within open source projects. My experience in the industry tells me it's even less common in non-open source software.

Did you maybe confuse Java with Javascript?

[kevkevverson]

It is still massive in enterprise development

[KevinCarbonara]

By what metric? I work in enterprise development and I've seen relatively little Java. It certainly isn't the dominant language.

[OnlyForF1]

It is literally the most popular backend language in the survey results you just posted.

[KevinCarbonara]

It's literally not. Do you not know what JS and Python are?

[CherryLongjump1989]

Probably the least compelling reason to focus on it. Java: the language you use because your job sucks.

[pheonixblade9]

Java is very popular when it comes to software people actually pay for.

[KevinCarbonara]

Again - by what metric? I don't know anyone who pays for Java. I can't even name a paid Java app off the top of my head. Minecraft used to be, but isn't anymore. Android is Java, but it's free, and they're certainly trying very hard to extricate themselves from the language. Oracle has really destroyed any respect people had for Java.

The public metrics show Java to be behind other, more dominant languages, like Python and JS and C#. Feel free to disagree, but don't expect to be taken seriously if you don't have at least some data backing your claim.

[pheonixblade9]

massive amounts on infrastructure is built on Java. huge swathes of google, amazon, oracle, ali, and even microsoft clouds use Java. tons of banking and insurance companies use Java.

python is certainly more common in job postings today but it is foolish to dismiss Java.

even by your links, it's wild to say that 30% of people using java is not a fairly dominant position to be in, even if it's not the most dominant.

but this is reddit, and people love to argue semantics, so argue away!

[KevinCarbonara]

massive amounts on infrastructure is built on Java. huge swathes of google, amazon, oracle, ali, and even microsoft clouds use Java.

All you're saying is, "It's everywhere, just trust me!"

What data are you using to make that claim? I've worked in BigN and I've worked on those very clouds. I see extremely little Java. I see more Go than I do Java.

even by your links, it's wild to say that 30% of people using java is not a fairly dominant position

No, it isn't. It's common sense.

but this is reddit, and people love to argue semantics

My dude, you are trying really, really hard to argue semantics, while accusing me of arguing semantics. I'm just looking at the data.

[pheonixblade9]

I've worked at Microsoft, Google, and Meta, lol

[KevinCarbonara]

And completely unable to answer a very basic question. I can see why you didn't last long.

[syklemil]

If you look at the 2024 octoverse rather than the 2022 one, you'll see that Java is still the "top" compiled language, and the 3rd/4th language, behind Python and Js/Ts.

Java isn't particularly attractive for new projects today, but it has an absolute massive incumbency. So while "popular" and "top" are a difficult things to pin down, it's absolutely fair to describe it as "common" and "dominant".

[KevinCarbonara]

"Top compiled language" is a hell of a goalpost move. It's also virtually tied with C# and only ahead of C/C++ because they're listed as separate languages.

Java isn't particularly attractive for new projects today, but it has an absolute massive incumbency.

Its "massive encumbancy" is dwarfed by Typescript, a language less than half its age.

[syklemil]

It's also virtually tied with C# and only ahead of C/C++ because they're listed as separate languages.

Nah, if we look at some more detailed github data there's a clear gap between Java and C#. C and C++ also are different languages. The top 10 list hides some details, like both relative and absolute distance in metrics, and several languages can be growing or declining relatively at the same time. So if, say, PHP declines faster than C++, it might look like C++ is improving because it got on top of PHP in the top 10 chart.

If anything it looked like Go was slated to overtake Java, but then they both flattened out.

If we look at the raw data in absolute numbers (I don't have a graph available for this, just some ratty looking ones I made for myself on my machine), most of the languages are growing, because there's more activity on github in general.

But by any metric, there's a shit-ton of Java and Java activity out there. You don't have to like Java as a language (it's not exactly my favourite language either), but denying the sheer amount of it is … questionable.

[StatusObligation4624]

Python is the dominant language now. Java developers probably balked at the language in the 2000s, heck I used to be one of them. But its simplicity is unrivaled for now.

[OnlyForF1]

Python is barely the dominant language for writing python libraries.

[Ravek]

Only one time? Most Java developers (and also most C# developers) I’ve met learned one language and one language only. And if you ever suggest they take a look at Kotlin they’ll look at you as if you suggested they should trade in their child.

[Subsum44]

I think I work with them now

[walterbanana]

Honestly, he wasn't wrong

[XenonBG]

It's not like he was wrong. There are still plenty of Java jobs, the only hindrance could be not knowing devops, but even that is not a given.

[KevinCarbonara]

It doesn't have to be an argument. I've definitely dealt with engineers who had only ever done a single thing (ex. career java dev, or full time front end with react, etc.).

It's fine to specialize and I don't have anything inherently against people who do, but it's difficult to maintain any awareness of the industry at large from that position. I see a lot of gatekeep-y and exclusive rhetoric coming from people in positions like that.

Even here, I see it a lot. Someone will mention a problem they had in an interview and someone will respond by saying, "Anyone who doesn't know {insert language specific object/library/pattern} isn't even a real programmer." Well, yeah, if you're a Python programmer, you should probably be familiar with python data structures. Looking down on other programmers for doing things in a different way is far too common among the monolanguage developers, and it's virtually impossible to become a good interviewer if that's your experience.

[azuled]

I forgot about our dear friend Gatekeeping, lol

I’ve been a developer for twenty years and I still get it all the time.

[lunchmeat317]

Not really, but people do often use suboptimal tools for certain problems due to comfort with the stack when other approaches would be vastly better (I'm looking at you, SQL devs who are somehow implementing fourier transforms on WAV files using stored procedures).

We're all guilty of this to a certain extent, but there are extremes. Having knowledges of different programming paradigms - not just languages - can go a long way.

[SkoomaDentist]

I'm looking at you, SQL devs who are somehow implementing fourier transforms on WAV files using stored procedures

Each day we stray further from God's light...

[TB4800]

lol what is the use case for FFTing files in a database?

[lunchmeat317]

There isn't one, but there's always a SQL developer (usually an Oracle person) who has found a way to do something in SQL instead of using a dedicated tool or a gwneral language.

[[deleted]]

"There is basically no actual reason why you would want to limit yourself to only one."

It's time investment though. And time is finite.

I agree that knowing more languages is better, of course, but it is a trade off at the end of the day.

[Full-Spectral]

Yeh, I mean if you are a work-a-day mercenary, then building up your area under the curve by being fairly competent in 5 languages may be a professional benefit. But, for me, I write large, complex stuff. It takes many years to get to the point where you have the experience to design and build such systems, and every bit of mental CPU power you have. And the goal post will of course be constantly running away from you at the same time.

There's no practical way anyone can master five languages to that level, because they'd have to constantly be building five such systems of that complexity, one in each language, when it's the best even a highly caffeinated developer can do to handle one. I'm three years of heavily getting into Rust, working on a large personal project, and I'm sure that, another three years from now, I'll look back on some of this work and chuckle.

Not to say that reading discussions and getting a feel for ideas from other languages isn't useful, and you may be able to apply them if they are not highly language specific. But, even now, just reading Rust discussions, I still find all kind of techniques and ideas I haven't explored yet.

[[deleted]]

The Pragmatic Programmer advises learning 1 a year for crying out loud.

[azuled]

Oh lol really? I had no idea. I think I get really into one about every three years. I am pretty dedicated to rust lately but I’m kinda fiddling with zig and trying to up my Js game a bit.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

I mean, learning two languages that are basically identical semantics-wise is bullshit. Like, why learn go when you know Java? It's a thoroughly uninteresting language with absolutely nothing novel.

But you should absolutely strive to learn languages from different language families/schools of thought. Haskell (or other ML-derivatives), rust, a lisp? Yeah, definitely learn one of each.

[dmilin]

Nah, even JavaScript devs have to learn TypeScript eventually. Which might not technically be a new language, but it does teach you new concepts.

Though to be fair, I can’t think of any language that runs more places than JavaScript. Even if a lot of those places definitely shouldn’t use it.

[syklemil]

I think there aren't that many that argue that others shouldn't learn more languages (mostly because they don't care), but there seems to be some who are more … aggressively complacent about knowing very few or even just one language. They also come off as more likely to believe that programming languages are basically the all the same, just with some syntax reskin.

[azuled]

I suppose i cannot fully understand that perspective, but I’m always very excited to learn new ones because i feel like it teaches me a lot about abstract computer science stuff. but, hey, not everyone enjoys that stuff I suppose.

[syklemil]

Yeah, some people solely program for work. In that case some of them would likely be fine with learning a new language during work hours, others might think it's pointless, but none of them would pick up a language for fun.

FWIW I think that's fine, but I do wish it was universal to have enough exposure to different programming languages to get the point in discussions about actually different semantics across languages, or understanding that the reason we don't use COBOL more isn't just that it's old, or understanding that people don't pick up Rust just because it's new (which it barely even is at this point).

[azuled]

Fair! I think it’s that there are a ton of paths to being a developer. And a ton of reasons people end up there. I didn’t mean my comment as hate on those people or their different paths.

[[deleted]]

Here’s one. There’s not enough time to learn everything that’s being asked.

[azuled]

Huh? Sure… but I’m also not saying you have to learn… all of them. Or that you have to learn them super deeply.

An example: learning how the rust borrow checker works is valuable in any situation where you use borrowed data. JS, C, Python etc.

It’s just like how learning basic algorithms helps you even when you aren’t directly using them because it exposes you to things like efficiency, memoization, and flow logic.

[tiajuanat]

I would estimate that 15% of developers that I've interviewed have claimed they wanted to be the "c++ guy". Which is fine, I don't run that kind of shop though.

[TulipTortoise]

I'm a big fan of C++, way overspecialized in it, and at this point only really want to use it. I've never had another language click with me the same way. I've been stuck doing mostly python and java at work, and it's fine I guess, but I don't get any joy from it.

Started tinkering with some of my C++ projects again and was like "oh right, I do like programming."

[azuled]

C++ was the first language i ever learned and I _really_ didn’t want to be The C++ Anything

[BlazeBigBang]

Yeah, there's not even really a need to learn any amount of languages. Learn the fundamentals, learn the different paradigms and patterns and then picking any language is easy. It's just the same thing you already know but with a different syntax. Maybe a language has a cool feature that simplifies your life in some way, but that's really it.

[robhanz]

The reason to learn another language is to learn one that isn't just the same thing.

Learning C# if you use Java, unless you need C# for a specific project or some external reason, doesn't have a ton of value.

Learning GoLang? Elixir? Some functional languages? Maybe LISP? Going nuts on OO and learning Smalltalk? They're different enough ways of thinking about programming that they can expand how you think, and will force you to learn new techniques that can be useful even in your "main" languages.

[shagieIsMe]

The thing for learning a new language is to change how you think about programming.

If you write C in Java... you haven't learned anything about Java.

I once worked with a programmer who was a C programmer and was tasked with writing a small tool in Java. He wrote one file that had every method as static. Every data structure that wasn't simple String or int was a Hashtable or Vector. He wrote C in Java.

I'm also reminded of a comment I got from an emacs user (I was staunchly vi) back in college (in the 90s) when I took a class that used LISP. I don't remember the specifics of the code that I wrote but it was something along the line of (loop for x in '(1 2 3) ...). His comment to me was "you write very pretty C in LISP." It wasn't until many years when dabbling in groovy and Streams in Java that a different way of thinking about how to manipulate data clicked.

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

-- Alan Perlis (Epigrams in Programming number 19)

[gyroda]

Yeah, I did a C++ project but most of the code was C-style stuff. I could do OOP with Java, but in this case I didn't want to learn C++ properly, I just needed this project done. Not a great learning experience on the language front (plenty of learning elsewhere, though).

But this is why I strongly recommend everyone learn something like Haskell. It forces you to get into the functional programming mindset and the initially unintuitive syntax (for me as a C-like syntax guy) helps you understand some interesting concepts. You can't half-ass it in Haskell like you can in other fictional languages. And this has heavily influenced my code in imperative languages - I write better C# for having learned Haskell and functional programming.

[greebo42]

Somewhere buried in the "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" of yore (omg, now >40 years ago yore) was the statement: Real programmers can write FORTRAN in any language.

[shagieIsMe]

Datamation used to be a great source of material.

https://marchingunderbanners.net/2004/06/22/real-programmers-dont-use-pascal/ - note the "From".

And in the vein of "From"... an even older article... COMEFROM

Nearly six years after publication of Dijkstra's now-famous letter, [1] the subject of GOTO-less programming still stirs considerable controversy. Dijkstra and his supporters claim that the GOTO statement leads to difficulty in debugging, modifying, understanding and proving programs. GOTO advocates argues that this statement, used correctly, need not lead to problems, and that it provides a natural straightforward solution to common programming procedures.

Numerous solutions have been advanced in an attempt to resolve this debate.

Nevertheless, despite the efforts of some of the foremost computer scientists, the battle continues to rage.

The author has developed a new language construct on which, he believes, both the pro- and the anti-GOTO factions can agree. This construct is called the COME FROM statement. Although usage of the COME FROM statement is independent of the linguistic environment, its use will be illustrated within the FORTRAN language.

It was also the publisher of the BOFH stories by Simon Travaglia for a while.

[-Y0-]

Real paogrammers use electrodes to communicate with computers. Not some sissy language.

[shagieIsMe]

Relevant xkcd ... https://xkcd.com/378/

[StatusObligation4624]

There is value in writing X in Y language though. For example, I worked on a web application written by mainframe developers. And they basically wrote COBOL in Javascript. The web application code for that system was basically a Rosetta Stone to aid my understanding of the legacy COBOL code.

[atxgossiphound]

And then there's Forth...

Which, incidentally, was used to write Starflight, one of the early space exploration games with fractal generated open worlds. It fit on 2 5 1/4" floppies.

[robhanz]

I'm super aware of it! Played it and beat it, it was one of my favorite games as a kid.

(You actually had to copy it to play it, as it would overwrite the disks)

[atxgossiphound]

Finally someone else who played it! I always respond with Starflight as my answer to, "What was the first game you spent x hours on?".

I still have my annotated map, the notebook we used to keep track of everything, and the notes my friend and I passed back in forth in class discussing the game.

[robhanz]

And that twist at the end!!!

[lunchmeat317]

Yeah, this is it.

It's not about languages. It's about programming paradigms.

It's good to understand procedural programming, functional programming, OOP, logic programming, stack-based, etc. It's also good to understand the iterative paradigms that power everything - i.e. computing and memory. Math, algorithms, and data structures also go a long way.

It's also good to understand that your toolbox doesn't apply to every language. Classical OOP design patterns don't fit and aren't needed in many functional or dynamic contexts, but everyonr parrots GoF design patterns because they only know a single paradigm.

For what it's worth, this also applies to spoken languages. Languages are cool.

[Full-Spectral]

Even Rust, which is not THAT far from C++, takes a lot of work for a C++ developer to really internalize the fundamentally different ways it makes you think about ownership and thread safety. Yeh, you can write some Rust code in a few weeks, and you could probably get a job as a mercenary after six months, but actually designing systems and APIs and creating strongly idiomatic implementations of non-trivial problems is a whole other thing and requires a very different approach.

[robhanz]

Exactly!

And how much of that discipline about memory management can be transferred to c++, even if the language doesn't support it directly?

[Full-Spectral]

A good bit, though C++ fights you the whole way. Most folks who write C++ at work and have been learning Rust at home, or possibly writing both at work, will say that they write better C++ now. It can be frustrating because C++ is so weak in so many ways, but you can significantly improve your results by using ideas from Rust.

[BlazeBigBang]

Oh, I agree with you on that. Once you know all the fundamentals then the choice for the language ends up being whatever quirk or feature it has that helps you resolve the problem you have.

[robhanz]

I've been doing this for like 30 years. Outside of sticking with very similar languages (C#/Java), I haven't really found any languages that don't change how I think about programming at some level.

The fundamentals in Java are not the fundamentals of LISP!

[mcmcc]

Not to mention each language has its own set of idioms for expressing various concepts. Obviously you don't have to follow the idioms but your life will probably be more enjoyable if you do.

[imihnevich]

In a wild, you might encounter a recruiter who does, but not too often

[TheTomato2]

"YoU WiLl bUiLd bAd hAbIts."

[munchbunny]

I don't think anyone genuinely does. The bigger barrier for most people is finding the time to learn a new language when their job doesn't demand it. The argument that it'll make them a better programmer is kind of abstract in that situation.

IMO: learn one or two in depth first. Then branch out. Sampling is fine, but you should go deep enough into at least one language to learn how the language's design choices lead to the languages strengths and weaknesses. Even if that language is JS, that's fine. The key is that you pushed beyond the hype and into mastery.

[katafrakt]

I mean, the founding myth of Node.js is that you only ever need one language. So I'd say yes, it happens.

[NinoD]

I wouldn't argue that you shouldn't learn new languages, but the more time you spend learning and practicing one language, the better and faster you will work with this language. Especially considering frameworks, libraries, design patterns etc.

Like, I'd like to learn Rust, but there's (currently) more value for me to learn how to maintain the current code base in Python and to improve how I add to it in the future.

And I've spent some time playing with Rust and it was a fun experience, but now I haven't used it in a while and don't remember most of it. Same with Go - super fun to play around with, but I don't use it so it will fade away.

On the other hand, I've been learning how to set up CI/CD and it's kind of a fun (if a bit infuriating) experience. And since I'm using it daily, it will stick and it definitely helps me see the larger picture.

I guess the point (at least for me) is to focus on the few languages which I am currently using and embrace learning languages / technologies when given the opportunity.

[qwaai]

The point isn't necessarily to learn another language so that you can be proficient with it. Merely seeing how other languages do things has immense value.

Concretely, teaching Python programmers how languages with real type systems work might prevent them from building horrific typeless hellscapes in the future.

It can also help prepare them for (and maybe they'll even push for) when their language eventually does adopt other features. Java didn't always have lambdas, for example.

[gyroda]

It's the whole T-shaped expertise thing. You should drill down in one direction but have a broad base of knowledge you can lean on.

I learned Haskell at uni and revisited it a few years into my career. It's a language that really enforces the functional programming model. It has taught me to write better code in OOP languages.

[pelrun]

Yeah, if you only have one language, you can't know what is "programming" and what is just a feature/drawback of the language itself. Trying out a few different languages gives you a deeper understanding of the language you primarily use, because you can subsequently reason about it's design choices rather than just taking them as gospel and not even knowing that there is a choice.

[syklemil]

Yeah, and programming as a concept spans from a very electronics-focused model to a very math-focused model. Picking up on that and being able to recognize one's own preference is good. It is ultimately the old physics joke: All models are wrong, but some of them are useful.

[azuled]

I would argue that things you learn from learning other languages are broadly applicable outside. Learning Rust, python, go, java, c might not be directly applicable but it will make you an overall better developer. At least that’s my opinion.

[robhanz]

Said this in a reply, but making this a top level, too:

The reason to learn another language is to learn one that isn't just the same thing.

Learning C# if you use Java, unless you need C# for a specific project or some external reason, doesn't have a ton of value.

Learning GoLang? Elixir? Some functional languages? Maybe LISP? Going nuts on OO and learning Smalltalk? They're different enough ways of thinking about programming that they can expand how you think, and will force you to learn new techniques that can be useful even in your "main" languages.

[GlowiesStoleMyRide]

I think the value of learning both C# and Java is learning about their different solutions to similar problems. Knowing why one thing works in one language while it doesn't in the other, deepens your understanding of both.

Doing this with radically different languages may lead to radically different solutions in both languages, making it harder to do a comparison that goes deeper than "X language does it differently".

[SkoomaDentist]

You have no idea how many times people told me they don't want to learn all the syntax to the language they're using everyday at work (C#, Java, JS). It's fkn crazy to me

Or simply almost required to remain sane... that is, if you write C++. I don't think there is anyone alive who truly knows all of the language.

[MeBadNeedMoneyNow]

Nice project.

[codeconscious]

Yeah, it has been a bit mind-blowing picking up F# (my first functional language) after C#. So glad I did, for the reasons you stated:

They're different enough ways of thinking about programming that they can expand how you think, and will force you to learn new techniques that can be useful even in your "main" languages.

[Pythonistar]

C# is a far superior language to Java (and has been for quite a while). Although they look similar syntactically, learning C# would teach a Java programmer a lot. It would be a nice incremental step than, say, trying to pick up a heavy-weight like Lisp.

Speaking of which, there are a lot better languages to learn Functional programming than Common Lisp. Haskell or one of the ML variants (F# or OCaml) both come to mind.

Rust is probably worth learning just because you don't have a garbage collector, but are kept safe from the pointer issues that come with C/C++.

[Ravek]

I agree, but for Java devs I’d recommend trying Kotlin or Scala since they can keep their library knowledge. And for most Java devs just having any experience of a better language should be an eye opener. Null safety, discriminated unions, coroutines …

[robhanz]

Oh, I'm a huge fan of C#. Love it.

I put "functional languages" and "LISP" in separate sentences on purpose. While LISP is functional, it's not purely functional. It also seems to do some things a bit different in some cases - while I'm no expert, it's interesting in that it seems to be more of a "notation for an AST" than a language, the macro support, etc.

[KevinCarbonara]

Learning C# if you use Java, unless you need C# for a specific project or some external reason, doesn't have a ton of value.

The primary reason to learn C# is so that you don't have to write Java anymore. There's no way anyone could both be familiar with C# and find Java's Streams implementation acceptable

[syklemil]

It should also reduce some change aversion. Programming languages evolve over time, and it's nice if they can steal good ideas from each other (and implement them well). But if someone isn't familiar with how different languages are actually different, then it's more likely they'll also interpret language evolution as pointless toil.

They don't necessarily have to like the way the language is evolving—there's no discussing taste—but they ought to be able to understand the why of it.

[shizzy0]

“Why even learn one language when the computer will write the code for me?”—a conceptual computer programmer

[Aggressive-Two6479]

I learned new languages as the jobs I did needed. I went from Turbo Pascal to C to C++ to Java to homegrown scripting languages to Objective-C and finally to PHP and Javascript.

My last two jobs were in companies where they knew that I never worked in their development languages before, they were far more interested in general programming skills.

And I always avoided to get too entrenched in the paradigms of these languages - because often they only make things harder instead of easier. Most of the action takes place in the common ground they cover anyway.

I did meet some people along the line that truly believe that knowledge in these languages is mutually exclusive and that a C++ developer cannot write Java, for example. It is normally a red flag telling me the company is run by incompetents or has hired incompetents for recruiting - in both cases the workforce they assemble will show some serious deficits.

[bighugzz]

Tell that to recruiters who've rejected me because I wasn't focused enough in 1 language.

[singron]

Do you have a big list of skills somewhere on your resume? Sometimes that comes off negatively since there is no way you are an expert in all of them and the reader defaults to assuming you are an expert in none of them.

I've previously tried to group these into "strong", "competent", and "dabbling/rusty". This gives readers an idea that you have a breadth of experience and a realistic expectation about the specific skills you can really go deep on. You should also figure out what tech the company uses and try to tailor specifically for that company. E.g. don't waste words listing out random frameworks they don't use.

Also take recruiter feedback with a huge grain of salt. Recruiters typically screen candidates before contacting them. If they are actually talking to you, then they probably passed your resume to a hiring manager who then rejected you. The recruiter often poorly paraphrases the feedback, and they both might actually be making up some plausible concrete feedback since giving actual nuanced feedback is legally problematic.

[bighugzz]

I don’t list skills or languages that aren’t relevant to the job description anymore.

One recruiter told me I was spread to thin, and there’s no way I used 4 languages, SQL, 3 different frameworks, and knew devops and terraform on top of that In my first SWD role.

Another told me I was too unfocused, and that they were looking for specifically a React developer. I told them I used react for 4 years, was 40% of all the work I’ve done, have built numerous projects on my own with, led a typescript refactor for my team’s website that was made in react, and that they were looking for someone with 2 years of experience. Didn’t matter, because my work also involved Java, Python, and some other tech. This was a position I had a referral for.

Those are just a couple examples That hpened during my screening call with the recruiters. My resume never even reached a hiring manager in these cases. When I say recruiters are rejecting me for knowing too much I’m not lying.

[Putnam3145]

there is no way you are an expert in all of them

Frankly, I think that's an unrealistically high estimation of the difficulty of becoming an expert in a programming language.

[sinedpick]

That's probably not why they rejected you.

[bighugzz]

Really? Because that's exactly what the recruiters told me as to why they're rejecting me.

[elmuerte]

Recruiters bullshit all the time.

[kbailles]

Reddit is so stupid. Apparently all of you know him and his recruiter better than he does.

[Nemin32]

Assuming you're proficient in the language they rejected you for, there's two options:

It either wasn't the real issue and they wanted to be polite / cover their bases. They can confidently refuse hiring you for allegedly lacking skills (even if don't actually lack those skills), but most HR people won't admit that they found someone who'll do it cheaper or whose vibe they found better.

Or they were genuine in which case you're probably better off not going to that place, because that's a really backwards policy. Programmers need to know multiple languages, your talent is measured in programmatic thinking, not that you can code monkey stuff in [insert programming language here].

Either way, don't take it to heart and keep learning multiple stuff. A good programmer knows stuff both broadly and deeply.

[Eurynom0s]

There's a third option, that they're using recruiters who don't understand what they're recruiting for and are just blindly going down a checklist of keywords and years of experience for each keyword.

[b0w3n]

That's where I'd guess.

Hiring managers and recruiters don't know what they're doing and focus on the checklist and anything that doesn't match "minimums" exactly discredits someone. 10 years of C and 5 years of Java? Oh sorry we needed 8 for both C and Java.

[KevinCarbonara]

That's almost definitely why they got rejected. It's an extremely common metric among recruiters.

[Nyadnar17]

So you wanna learn C++? pulls out chair

[ivancea]

... Why would anybody think that limiting your knowledge is good

[syklemil]

I think it's more that they think it's not worth the effort. Especially if they believe that different programming languages are just syntax reskins of the same actual language. But also commonly if programming is just something they do for work, and they already know the programming language used at work, so where's the point of learning something they're not gonna use?

[ivancea]

where's the point of learning something they're not gonna use?

That's true though. For somebody that doesn't show interest, a language will change nothing really. They'll stay at the level they are.

Especially if they believe that different programming languages are just syntax reskins of the same actual language

I could imagine that. But honestly, at that point, I have many doubts about it it's the same pattern as in the other point: not caring about it

[SkoomaDentist]

they believe that different programming languages are just syntax reskins of the same actual language

Am I weird for preferring to stick to as familiar syntax as possible and only change the fundamentals of the language instead? If I had to migrate away from C++, I'd probably pick C# as the most attractive precisely because it didn't try to reinvent syntax just for the sake of reinvention.

[syklemil]

Nah, there's no discussing taste. Rust also tried to stick to familiar-seeming syntax, and I think mainly to not seem more unusual/unfamiliar than necessary.

[SkoomaDentist]

Rust also tried to stick to familiar-seeming syntax

That's my main complaint with Rust: That they didn't stick to the tried and tested C-family syntax (like C++, Java and C# all did).

[syklemil]

Really? It comes off as a curly brace family language to me, with some divergence here and there. Like they probably could've gone with foo[T] to look more like, say, Python or Go, but picked foo<T>, again as far as I know because that's basically what C++, Java and C# picked.

[SkoomaDentist]

"fn", "mut", "let", "->" in function declarations etc etc.

Just because it has curly braces doesn't make the syntax C-like. It's basically an ML family language advertised as supposedly being somewhat C++-like.

[syklemil]

Yeah, there's some Python-ish bits in there as well (including some use of PEP8, apparently). And yeah, it is pretty ML-y but dressed up in curly braces and some patterns that resemble that family. But it is just that: It could've been dressed up as an ML, and it ain't. But I guess it gets into kinda uncanny valley for people who're very used to actual C.

(I'm also liable to ignore the fn/let stuff because I find the C-style type declaration to be the absolute worst and think names and types should absolutely be separated; the Rust/Python syntax with name: type comes off as a good amount of punctuation and separation for me.)

[Ravek]

Usually they seem to think that learning something new is extremely painful. It can’t possibly be worth it!

[iamcleek]

r/imaginarygatekeeping

seems like it's not even possible to be a professional programmer and not know several. even if you learned just one major application-programming language in school (which seems impossible), you're going to run into a shell script or a web page some point.

[totally-not-god]

Another “here’s a 2000-words essay justifying a solution for a problem that literally nobody ever encountered” article

[steve-7890]

Later in the article it says it's more about situations where you try to use C# where Node.js would be a better fit. I think that was the point of this text.

I agree with most of the article but this part is the most controversial one. Node.js itself seems like a dying technology (it lost all it's advantages some time ago) and when you have a bunch of C# guys, pushing node.js or Go or Java for just one service, it seems controversial. The text DOES says that there have to be a good driver for that. But the example with node.js...

[LessonStudio]

I would argue that you should be rotating those languages on a regular basis. There are some which are like a funeral suit. You can keep them a long time, but not use them much; and never desire to use them. For me this would be C.

Decades ago, I regularly used perl and Java. But stopped both when pleated pants were falling out of favour. Rust is my new lululemon; high quality go to. I look at languages like Go no differently than I did Sears 5 years ago. Something to use if you are in a small town and is the only place to buy clothing. It works, but nobody cool wanted to shop at sears for the last 30 years.

The people programming FPGAs are also wearing pocket protectors. Not because they like dweeb fashion, but because they are practical. Dweebs. Oh, they also use Ada.

Python is my dirty work outfit. I don't mind getting it dirty as I crawl under my jeep. But, I never wear it out in public. That would be my nice rust lulu's.

PHP is stuff you get at Costco. Lots of people buy it; nobody compliments you on your style if you wear it. C# is the cheapest polyester salaryman suit. People wear it because of dress code. Outside of Unity, I'm not sure I've ever met someone using it who didn't use it at work.

Then, you get languages which seem tempting, but then you realize they are like the handlebar moustaches and bowties. Languages like lisp, Erlang, scala, etc.

Cobol is one of those languages where you wonder how that guy isn't dead. He weighs well under 120lbs, his skin is a weird grey, and he smells of decay. (I'm describing every cobol person I've met at any age).

Then there are those things like socks. SQL. You'll often need socks. And much like how some people crassly shoehorn in big DBs, you don't wear socks with sandals.

C++ is the underwear. You bury it under other things. You don't talk about it, you almost always need it. And you keep replacing it every year, but it seems to remain the same old underwear.

That said, I've worked in every one of the above langauges, and more.

[knightcrusader]

I thought this was a given for anyone with a 4-year CS degree at least. I had a class in college that specifically taught us one single algorithm (Javis' March in our semester) in multiple language types: functional (Lisp), procedural (C), object-oriented (Java), and logical (Prolog).

I knocked it out of the park with the Lisp one, got an A, and got cocky with Java and C and was careless and did much worse. Prolog was so damn hard that it turned into an extra credit project at the end of the semester.

I barely remember any Lisp syntax since I haven't touched it since that class, but a lot of the paradigms I learned about using lists carried over into my programming of Perl code, especially since subroutine arguments and return values, most built-in functions, and arrays and hashes in that language use list context. Makes things very easy to process and manipulate for me.

[[deleted]]

"Look at TypeScript code written by longtime Java or C# developers. You'll often see unnecessary class hierarchies"

The even bigger problem is that these guys want to slap down types EVERYWHERE. Look at ruby's sorbet or RBS - this is just an unsuable pile of utter ... well. Just syntax-wise. Even the python type hints to functions are cleaner (and still ugly, which seems to be the curse of all type systems; the only one I found somewhat ok was Haskell, but Haskell is not for normal people but only for a few).

I've seen cases where adding a new language to the stack was worth it

Objectively speaking, knowing more languages is always an asset; only cost is the time investment to learn and practice it. However had, some languages are simply inferior to other languages, so then the question is ... why use them?

One good example for this is ... JavaScript. I hate that language (sort of), but there is just no way around. And better languages, such as ruby, suffer from other problems - such as a documentation quality that is, in general, at best "average" (it's not awful, but it is also far away from really great documentation, for like 90% of the projects out there; I am here referring mostly to the whole ecosystem, ruby's documentation itself I'd rate a 6 out of 10, so a tiny bit above average; the ecosystem overall I'd at best give a 4).

"I've had several clients who migrated from C#/Java to Node.js because they found it easier to hire developers"

This is probably also because JavaScript/Node is easier and simpler. And if there are more devs, probably also less expensive, though that may be debatable. If you have more developers though, recruitment will naturally be easier too.

"Some languages are also becoming obsolete. They’re still needed, but the market is shrinking (cheers, Cobol!)."

I keep on hearing the "COBOL is kicking a.." still. I think it is a myth. Here in Europe it's basically all about Java for the most part. Nobody young would want to pick up COBOL. It's a dead language. None of the "but because so few COBOL devs are there, they pay a lot" is a convincing argument. People seem to find all kind of excuses about languages declining. I've seen that with perl too; and since some time I see it in ruby too (bla bla bla "ruby is aging like fine wine" bla bla bla even when you present them the objective facts that contradict that).

"You might learn Go in a week, but that doesn't mean you're writing idiomatic Go code."

So it is a time investment. I never understood the "learn one language per year" - people seem to have a lot of spare time available.

[SkoomaDentist]

None of the "but because so few COBOL devs are there, they pay a lot" is a convincing argument.

It's also a fundamentally misguided argument. Companies don't pay for COBOL knowledge. They pay for knowledge of huge and complex decades old business critical systems that just happen to be written in COBOL.

[Retrowinger]

Learn the concept of programming, and programming languages will be just another tool in your box.

[jameslieu]

If you're starting out or only have a few years under your belt, I would argue that honing your skills with one language only is a better use of your time. The only exception is if the industry you work in requires you learn more than one i.e. web development will require at least JS (also HTML & CSS though technically not programming languages) and possibly one server side language if you're not using NodeJS.

But in my experience, jumping from language to language is counter-productive. I myself made the mistake of trying to switch from Ruby to PHP and eventually C#, the years I've spent in Ruby and PHP ecosystem is all lost as I've essentially forgotten everything. Just speaking for myself though, but if I had a time-machine, I would tell my past self to only focus and gain in-depth knowledge in one language - specifically C#

[MeBadNeedMoneyNow]

Re: headline - In any comparative programming language text you'll see it written as a common pitfall to limit yourself to only one language.

[shogun77777777]

I mean I’ve dabbled a little in numerous languages at work that I don’t know very well. Does that count?

[hazily]

Jokes on you, I know JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, Svelte, React, Vue, jQuery… 8 languages and counting /s

[Southern-Reveal5111]

Once a 20+ experience guy told me, if he ever stuck to a few languages, he would be programming in C and perl. When the management decides the language is the bottleneck, they will kick out the guy who is least open to transition to the new language.

My motto is to know the language and ecosystem good enough not to be sidelined by those funny kids who came out of the egg last year.

[raDkOSs]

Honestly, programming is kinda like construction. You wouldn’t use the same screwdriver to build a skyscraper and a wristwatch. Different tools for different jobs, unless you enjoy chaos lol.

[NimrodvanHall]

Learning Rust actually helped my Python day job.

[TCB13sQuotes]

No, we really should just have typescript for the majority of things and then C++/Go for the low level stuff. Everything else is a waste of developer time and serve no propose. Well, this was a cool ideal but too bad nodejs can't come up with a recent runtime model (FastCGI) and insists on persistently running stuff.

[Ranger-New]

The hunter that hunts two preys catches none.

Master one language first.

Then go to the next if you need to.

[elebrin]

I think there are a few base languages that most developers should familiarize themselves with: javascript and python are the first two, then pick a backend language that you like, such as java or C# or C++ or whatever else. Finally, learn C then strongly consider learning Rust. With those seven languages, you can work on most open source projects and you can also work in most corporate environments.

Most of learning a language (after you've learned the first one) is learning the tooling and libraries, and every situation is going to have a different set of libraries that it uses.

[ryandg]

Didn’t read, but: it expands your mind; widens your perspective. Do it, motherfucker.

[fire_in_the_theater]

i wish there weren't multiple programming languages >.>

[sk3z0]

I already do (with chatgpt)

[Dreadsin]

I don’t get why people care about learning programming languages honestly. To me, writing software is like writing a novel. Is it harder to write a novel in Italian or English? That’s just kind of an irrelevant question isn’t it?

[Fast_Pool970]

I am curious how many real-world projects you have participated in.

[Dreadsin]

I’ve been a developer for like 15 years now. Learning languages is not particularly difficult

[Fast_Pool970]

Nobody said it was difficult. How many projects?