The benefits of learning languages that you won't use [closed]

Answer 1

Bryond what has already been said, I really like new languages just because it can bring new interest to programming. You learn different ways to approach problems and the strengths/weaknesses of certain languages. It is something new to learn and any good programmer should be striving to always be learning new things. It mixes up your daily routine of possibly programming in the same language for years.

I also like what everyone has said about programming perspective.

Answer 2

I spent some time studying clojure even though I knew I wouldn't use it in the near-term (mostly because I can't really deploy on the JVM).

It has concepts that aren't supported by the languages I use (C#/C/C++/Python/Perl) and I wanted to know what I was missing and also if it would be worth looking into libraries that purport to add these features.

Specifically, I'm very interested in understanding Lisp-style macros and the direct concurrency support. I also spent some time reading the implementation, specifically the datastructures, which was very educational -- good to see a quality implementation of persistent datastructures to learn how they work (and give you immutability without sacrificing much performance).

Answer 3

Different languages have different ways of implementing the same ideas. By learning new languages, you get a different perspective on how things can be accomplished, and can then use that knowledge to approach how you program in your current environment. Think about object oriented and functional programming. OO Programmers can learn a lot about parrellization from languages like C.

Answer 4

I think learning languages will always benefit you even if you don't use them again. I started playing with Ioke as an attempt to learn something experimental and because of it my JavaScript has improved because certain ideas have been cemented.

learning a new language will possibly give you new insights that you will try translate to your main language.

Answer 5

Can't shed much light on this in terms of programming languages, but it seems very similar to the "why learn a dead language?" argument that surrounds Latin, and much of the reasoning there can be applied here.

Answer 6

Deeply learning language just for learning language has too little benefits. If you have a lot of tasks and you don't know language that ideal for solving it then it is make sense to learn that language. Otherwise it is make sense to spend the time to become expert in languages you already know.