Comments on: Is trying to learn a new language every year worth it?

By: Sudhakar Ramasamy

Sudhakar Ramasamy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:33:15 +0000

On a tangent, you can break this down to learn something new everyday. So learn a new Java tip a day or a new eclipse tip a day or a new design pattern a day.

I find it much more difficult to plan and execute a year at a time and much easier to plan and execute on shorter time frames like a day.

By: Alexandru Luchian

Alexandru Luchian — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:38:06 +0000

Want to learn something cool?

Why don’t you start with learning Romanian.

By: Jim Chrystal

Jim Chrystal — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:35:27 +0000

I like Zach’s take on it – learn something new every year. You don’t need to be an expert, but have a functional understanding of something new each year is a good idea. As for me, I’m working on forgetting something every year. I’ve forgotten BAL, COBOL, JCL, and CICS just recently. I’m also considering unlearning OS/2 and REXX.

By: Aaron King

Aaron King — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:57:03 +0000

Thanks for the comments… I was afraid this post would get me shunned like Tom Cruise after he writes that mission statement in Jerry Maguire!

By: Paris Holley

Paris Holley — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:35:36 +0000

I agree, learning a language is more than being able to write a few lines of code. As long as you are a competent developer, you should be able to “learn” any language, being an expert requires a lot more effort. At the moment, there are only a few languages that make much financial sense to be experts in, and trying to be an expert in everything is a horrible idea. Though one of those languages may be mainstream 5-10 years down the road, there is no need to jump the gun, opportunities are everywhere. As Zach said, broadening your “tech-savvy” is much more valuable, or even picking up a hobby like automobiles. At least learning how to work on your car has an immediate ROI (assuming you have something to work on) rather than a sense of accomplishment for knowing something that you will probably never use ( at least anytime soon).

By: Zach Cox

Zach Cox — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:21:19 +0000

While you certainly won’t become an expert in a new language in 1 year, I think it can still be valuable to learn a new language. You will probably learn to program in a different style and will probably learn new approaches to solving problems. In the end, I doubt that you’ll be worse off for having spent a year learning a new language.

I found myself wondering which new language to learn in 2010, and then wondered why limit yourself to learning a new programming language? Just learn *something* new. Like you said, delve more deeply into a language you already know: if it’s Java, become an expert on all of the concurrency utilities introduced in Java5, or learn all about several profiling tools. Or learn to program for a mobile platform like Android or iPhone.

Or forget languages entirely and explore an advanced technology. Augmented reality, computer vision, information retrieval, NLP, text mining, and machine learning are all hot technologies, will be very challenging to learn about, and may very well be useful in your future career.