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In my last job I typically worked 12 hours a day and most weekends. Sometimes I would stay up until 2am to work on my DPhil. There is such a thing as not enough time to learn a new language.
I had a colleague who would use his work time to learn new languages irrespective of the technical justification. He would leave a trail of unfinished, unmaintainable, buggy code, but his resume looked great. There is definitely enough time if you are one of those people who is comfortable stealing it from their employer.
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Help
Two translators on a ship are talking.
"Can you swim?" asks one.
"No" says the other, "but I can shout for help in nine languages."
Language Barrier
Two highway workers were busy working at a construction site when a big car with diplomatic license plates pulled up.
"Parlez-vous français?" the driver asks them. The two workers just stared.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" The two continued to stare at him.
"Fala português?" Neither worker said anything.
"Parlate Italiano?" Still no response.
Finally, the man drives off in disgust.
One worker turned to the other and said, "Gee, maybe we should learn a foreign language..."
"What for? That guy knew four of them and what good did it do him?"
Say It In French
Morris was going to Paris. It was the first time he’d ever been out of New York. He went to his friend Shlomo.
“Shlomo, what am I going to do? I don’t know a word of French.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Shlomo told him. “Just keep your sentences short and put *la* in front of the word. They’ll think you’re French and never know the difference.”
So Morris gets to Paris and orders “la Taxi” to take him to “la restaurant” and gets there without any problem. Thinking he has discovered the secret to international travel he orders “la borscht” shortly after which the waiter brings him a bowl of beet soup.
Morris is so impressed with this that he forgets himself and begins to speak to the waiter in English. “Isn’t it amazing,” he says. “I never studied French in my life and everyone in Paris understands me!”
To which the waiter replied, “Look schmuck, if I wasn’t la Jew from la Brooklyn, you would have just been served a bowl of “la dreck” instead of “la borscht.”
Misspelled..
One spelling mistake can destroy your life!
A husband wrote a message to his wife on his official trip and forgot to
add ‘e’ at the end of a word…
“I am having such a wonderful time!
Wish you were her..!”
This is a true story from the japanese embassy in US
Mori-obama[^]
Leslie Nielsen
"I am serious...and don't call me Shirley."
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defacto "That guy knew four of them and what good did it do him" 
d{^__^}b - it's time to fly
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It assumes that learning a new programming language is what will make you a better programmer. I'd say the truth here is the other way around. Good programmers have no problem learning a new programming language. There's no impediment to it, but they won't bother unless there's an actual reason. To illustrate, I've worked in Assembler, Basic, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript and Visual Basic. Did I learn any of these "to be a better programmer"? Nope, I learned them because there was a reason to use them. I had a job with an existing code base that required it, or a new project that could be implemented faster using a more modern language (that's why I learned C#).
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indeed, whats the point learning useless languages, ..living in bulgaria and learning chinese, i guess only idiots can do it ;} 
..but never say never, there is possibility that china will take over the world, ...but what if you learned wrong chinese dialect 
d{^__^}b - it's time to fly
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Tom Clement wrote: Good programmers have no problem learning a new programming language.
I would disagree. I consider myself far beyond just "good", and I have definite troubles wrapping my head around functional programming - monads, currying, etc. I get the concepts, but there still remains a disconnect for me to get to a deeper answer to the question, "why???"
Marc
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Hi Marc,
Ok, that'll teach me not to be glib. I think I'm a good programmer, and of course, you're right that not everything comes easily to me. I guess my point is that learning a new programming language is primarily useful only if it achieves something concrete. I've recently enjoyed using linq (not a programming language I suppose) for a utility I was writing and it took me a while to wrap my head around it. In the end, I was thrilled that using it simplified my program significantly. So there was a reason to learn it, I spent the time to learn it because of that, like a good programmer should. To me, the choice to learn something new when it will provide concrete benefits is what makes a good programmer, rather than the converse, suggested by this question, that learning a new language for the sake of learning it makes you a good programmer. Anyway, I guess I'm rambling.
Anyway, great to hear from you. (You wrote nice things about the first article I contributed to CP 8 years ago  ).
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Me too - is it age?
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I somewhat agree with you.
If you know basic of programming and concepts then it does not matter to you learning a new programming language, after all a learning new syntax is just matter of 15-20 days work.
I been through foxpro, c, c++, Delphi, Perl, Python, CGI, VB, C#, VB.Net, Java.
Only differnce I saw is in the implmentaiton of Perl and VC++, they are more interacting with Native services of Operating System and you can gain much control over there. But otherwise all are same.
thanks
rushi
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By the time I finished high school I knew more than 3, seems to me like that's hardly a stopping point.
But I have noticed, the more languages you know, the easier you can pick up on another language, so each one is easier to learn than the last.
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Yes,Normally Any developer know more than 3 languages.
Most of the time you have to switch between them.
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Now, not all of them are 'Programming' languages, but I know:
HTML
XML
ASP/ASPX
CSS
Java
JavaScript
C++ (Somewhat)
C (See: C++ Note)
Visual Basic
C#
What languages do you guys (and gals) know?
public class SysAdmin : Employee
{
public override void DoWork(IWorkItem workItem)
{
if (workItem.User.Type == UserType.NoLearn){
throw new NoIWillNotFixYourComputerException(new Luser(workItem.User));
}else{
base.DoWork(workItem);
}
}
}
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Only little bit HTML.
xoxo
Kid sister ![Rose | [Rose]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
There's no place like Lounge - Me
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HTML
XML
CSS
PHP
Java
JavaScript (mostly via jQuery)
C/C++ (haven't done too much pure C)
C#
VB.Net (in theory, I haven't tried to use it in years)
Python
Ruby
Scheme
MIPS assembly
Probably more, those are just the ones off the top of my head. I don't have much trouble picking up a new language, I can usually get the basics down in a few hours. (Though I'm only fluent in C/C++, C#, Java, and Python, because I use those ones regularly.)
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Zac Greve wrote: What languages do you guys (and gals) know?
Worth it's own survey 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
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True. Chris, you hear that?
(On a side note, I hate typing on an iPad!)
public class SysAdmin : Employee
{
public override void DoWork(IWorkItem workItem)
{
if (workItem.User.Type == UserType.NoLearn){
throw new NoIWillNotFixYourComputerException(new Luser(workItem.User));
}else{
base.DoWork(workItem);
}
}
}
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That was the first language I learnt.
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I know ASM, VB and C/C++
I have little desire to delve into .NOT
.NOT now anyway.
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HTML
XML
ASP/ASPX
CSS
a bit of Java
JavaScript
C#
vb6
vb.net
sql (if xml and css count so does this)
php
English
I clicked "Simply no desire to learn another language", because unless I need to learn a new language for a job, or a new project, I don't have the desire, all of the above I learnt because there was a need.
Nat 'Squeak' Davies
Squeak Technologies
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Since I started programming in jr. high school back around 1980, I have written code for pay using:
BASIC (several dialects)
Pascal
dBase III
DOS
COBOL
C++
C#
Visual Basic (versions 3 through 6)
VB Script
VB.Net
SQL
Javascript
Java (Android)
Not including the languages I learned in school or otherwise did not use professionally:
Assembly (6510, 8088, 80386)
Fortran
RPG II
VAX VMS
IBM JCL
When something comes along that requires I learn a new language, I will learn a new language. Until then, I think I have most of the bases already covered.
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I usually learn a new language for one of the two reasons:
1) Need it at work: C, Fortran, C++, C#, VB, JavaScript, Perl, Powershell, SQL (ok, not really a programming language).
2) Curiosity: ML (SML, OCaml, F#), Scheme, Haskell, Python.
Learning languages from category 2) is always fun, but I am much better with ones from category 1) and would generally pick them for real work.
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A real challenge for an old red neck!
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Can't manage time properly (or) Not enough time. IMO, both are same.
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Having other priorities (or) Not enough time.
There's no shame in that, many people seem to mix them up though
The Mayan calendar hasn't ended yet, so time still goes on for a while.
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
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