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> Critical thinkers can accomplish anything. Critical thinkers can master French, Ruby on Rails, Python or whatever future language comes their way. I guess an

by sndean 10y ago

> Critical thinkers can accomplish anything. Critical thinkers can master French, Ruby on Rails, Python or whatever future language comes their way. I guess an example of this is the Italian girl that won last year's Dyalog APL student competition: http://www.dyalog.com/news/102/420/2015-APL-Programming-Contest-Winners.htm http://www.dyalog.com/news/102/420/2015-APL-Programming-Cont... She was studying Latin and Greek, then was exposed to APL, enjoyed it, and was apparently very good at it... Fine, that makes some sense. But, if the goal is learn APL (or any programming language), why not just learn APL? Is it really true that learning French prior to Ruby on Rails gives you a unique advantage?

jdminhbg 10y ago
Even just within programming, I'd say ever successive language you learn gets easier, as you're able to apply labels to patterns you see, and think abstractly about language features. I don't think that if your goal is to learn RoR, the best way to accomplish it is to learn French first. But if you take two programming newbies, and one of them knows a couple foreign languages and the other doesn't, the former will have an advantage.