How many programming languages does the average programmer end up having to learn?

#1
DarkLordoftheMonkeys

Posted 29 October 2009 - 10:10 AM

Programming Professional

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I'm planning on learning at least one language for each of the major programming paradigms - C for system programming, C++ for OOP, SQL for databases, Lisp for list based programming, Prolog for logic programming, Perl, sed, and AWK for text processing, PHP for server side development, Bash Shell and DOS Batch for the command line, assembly for low level programming, and Fortran for math and science. I feel like that may be too much to expect of myself. Right now I only know Shell and Javascript, plus bits of other languages.

#2
Orjan

Posted 29 October 2009 - 11:17 AM

Writes binary right handed and hex left handed

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3,298 posts

My suggestion is: Don't plan. Learn what comes handy at the time. Better to know a few languages really really good than a little about very many.

C/C++ and SQL I would agree on.

PHP is very alike C/C++ and is a good choice for web development.

Lisp/Prolog, I don't think they really are that much used so there is a need to learn them for fun.

Perl/sed/Awk/Bash, sure, if you will be programming shellscripts alot or creating installation scripts for *nix programs and similar.

Dos batch programming is disappearing more and more. I think windows latest scriptengine manage VBScript or even Visual basic for doing the same thing.

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I study Information Systems at Karlstad University when I'm not on CodeCall

#3
Guest_Jordan_*

Posted 29 October 2009 - 11:29 AM

Guests

You don't need to learn a multitude of languages. IMO, it is better to know a couple extremely well rather barely know all of them. Here are some options:

System/Desktop/GUI: C/C++/C#/VB/Java/etc
Web: PHP/Ruby/Perl/ASP/etc.

You should also understand/know TCP/IP Networking (this comes in often during commercial development), Database access/SQL, HTML/XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript.