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Re: (OT) "Learn one new language every year"? Yeah, right.by talexb (Chancellor) |
on Oct 08, 2004 at 15:27 UTC ( [id://397674]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
Hmm, not sure I can match Herveus' list of 28 languages .. I graduated high school in '75 so you'd think I'd learned a few along the way ..
Actually, my test of whether or not you know a language is whether you can teach someone else the language. I did that with C, and consider myself a (past) master of that language. I'm still learning Perl .. there are dark OO corners that I really just don't get, and I still haven't mastered regular expressions. I get AUTOLOAD now, and I even get MethodMaker (cool craziness). Nothing on CPAN yet. What I take away from the Pragmatic Programmer is that you've always got to be learning, explanding your mind. If you let yourself get stale, then you're not exercising your brain. One way to keep the brain active is to learn a new launguage. One a year is impossible -- I don't have time for that, but I do have time to try new SysAdmin things on my Linux box, try a few things with Ruby, follow up on some of the programming ideas that have been percolating for a while. Conclusion? If you're in shape, you can reel off the latest technical book you've read, or the cool feature you've found and used recently. If you're not in shape, you just go in to work, stumble through your eight hours and wish for the weekend. Your choice. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds Update: Good grief, I forgot FORTRAN, my highest mark at university (yay). That would show up as 2a.
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