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I'm a programming dinosaur. I learned Turbo Pascal. But since then, it's all been mostly in the C/C++/C#/Java/Obj-C/Actionscript family. I can pickup PHP or Actionscript in a weekend, and have, so no big deal. Just dive in and do a web search. On the weekend do a little reading and you are ready to roll.
I suppose there are so really obnoxious languages but even then you can prototype in your language of choice and port the code.
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I think you'll have more trouble with functional languages
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The big jump is to object oriented stuff when you started with C or Fortran... It's doable but you wouldn't pick it up on your own.
Anyway, if you do a course you get a week's jolly and a little diploma you can hang on your CV.
------------------<;,><-------------------
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Agree. Sure, there are some languages with different concepts - functional programming, OO etc - that may throw you a bit if you're not used to them, but my experience is that once you learn a second language it gets very easy to learn the next ones. Programming is programming, and languages is just about syntax for the most part. It took me only a day or two to pick up the essentials and be reasonably productive in both C# and Java, and so far I've had the same with just about any other language I've tried.
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I'd be very impressed if you picked up Haskell in a couple of days.
Picking up a language that has the same basic programming idiom is trivial: C, Java, C# especially so as the syntax is so similar.
Smalltalk, SELF may be more problematic: there's more to them - to write well requires a shift to real object-oriented programming.
Going to a functional language requires an entire shift in thinking. Haskell, as a pure functional language, particularly so. I'm still struggling with it.
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True, I expect it would take more than a couple of days to learn Haskell 
As I understand it functional programming is a completely different concept. Would be interesting to try one day...
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rudolfsson wrote: As I understand it functional programming is a completely different concept.
Functional is to OO what OO was to structural. Many of us find it alien right now but perhaps in a few years we won't.
Kevin
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Picking 5 languages at random...
Fortran IV
Prolog
C#
Perl
XAML
Yeah, all just the same with syntax changes. 
Of course, as the number of languages you know increases, it does become easier to pick up new ones, but you then have to be careful not to get caught by the differences.
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Hey, I know COBOL, I should be able to switch to anything right? 
I think previous experience with any imperative language is a major handicap to learning Prolog, so that's a good one to counter the OP's point.
'As programmers go, I'm fairly social. Which still means I'm a borderline sociopath by normal standards.' Jeff Atwood
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Julien Villers wrote: imperative language
That was the phrase I was trying to remember! The old language classifications of imperative vs. declarative and structured vs. unstructured. Now there's also procedural, functional, OO, etc., etc., etc.!
| Fortran IV | - | imperative unstructured | | Prolog | - | declarative unstructured | | C# | - | imperative procedural? structured OO | | Perl | - | imperative? (un?)structured OO? | | XAML | - | declarative? structured? |
"Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language." [^]
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Different language genres, e.g., functional, declarative, imperative, procedural and O-O, require different ways of thinking. I've seen people struggle with XSLT (I was once one of them) trying to use imperative (like C# or Java) techniques when XSLT is declarative--and its associated XPath language is functional. Sure, changing among C#, Java and JavaScript is relatively easy, but other languages are different by more than just syntax and library API.
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Nope, consider two 'the same by definition' languages like C# and VB.NET: wonderful, brilliant, innovative the former and ugly, convoluted, dumb the latter. 
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler.
-- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong.
-- Iain Clarke
[My articles]
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One of the first bits of professional programming I had done was RPG, which was very different from the Fortran and Pascal I learned in school. The job I now have started 16 years ago maintaining COBOL applets for an Informax database, and that was REALLY different. You cannot just start coding with RPG and COBOL: both of these languages have different syntatic sections for app setup and data layout, so you have to organize on a much more fundamental level, and writing something from scratch requires that you start with the entire application in mind before you begin.
With some languages, mere syntax is not enough.
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The languages you stated are similar but there are other languages: F#, Prolog, ErLang, Scala which are remarkably different.
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Aren't those just academic languages or do people actually do paying work with them?
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ErLang is widely used in Telecommunication industry. Recently, Facebook used ErLang for its chat feature.
Twitter uses Scala.
Prolog is mainly academic.
F# use have started at a few places.
They are not widely used, but they are being used.
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote: Twitter uses Scala
As does LinkedIn, EDF and The Guardian (UK newspaper).
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote: F# use have started at a few places.
Financial sector is interested. Credit Suisse definitely use it, it as Don Syme posted a job ad from them about a year ago.
Kevin
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I think language is secondary skill but anyway it should be at high level. If product designed bad no language can improve it.
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I only learned enough to finish what I had to do.
When I got out of the fetal position I took a shower and cleaned myself real good.
A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home! Rodney Dangerfield
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First of all, forcing you to use an unknown (to you) language likely means it is an already existing project. At least that was the case for me. I'd like to say I'd answer the first way listed, but reality doesn't work that way.
About 2 weeks ago I was given a task "Add this field to this software" I did, but guess what, scope creep. So bad that the webpage had to be updated, too. Broken, badly architected, badly written, and undocumented ASP with SOAP, etc. I told the requesting party that I do not know how anything about ASP in an attempt to push back the deadline, the response was "well, take a look." This turned into "It's due Friday" (On Wednesday) and finally "It's due by midday today" On that Thursday. I'd love to learn ASP as I went along, but that was impossible with the looming deadline and horrible base code.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. "
— Hunter S. Thompson
My comedy.
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It has happened to me several times. It started over 25 years ago with VAX Pascal and just ocntinued from there. As others have said, in some ways it's the best way to learn a language! You have to!
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I guess I meant the title question to mean the survey should have included if it's happened to you. I agree it's a way to learn, but management needs to understand that it's not a simple task.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. "
— Hunter S. Thompson
My comedy.
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That's true.
Of course, if you're going to have to learn the language anyway, you're going to have to write some code examples to see how things work, so they might as well be stuff you're going to use for the project. As you gain experience, you can (usually) go back and improve things later!
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This can happen with new projects too . On the first week on my new job I was given a project to build an interface for a telephone server. At this point I was a C++ programmer with zero experience in VB. The head of department then told me that every program in this company is written in VB, so I started learning .
I must admit, VB isn't the hardest language to learn, but I dived in and learned it as I went through the project. Now after 6 years we did a more or less complete redo on the project, to remove the "lessens learned" passages in the code  .
cheers
Phil
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The project is maintence of a 100,000 line VAX BASIC application from the 90's and you start tomorrow... have fun
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