Programming languages all come with a specific mental model for how you're supposed to code in the language. That's why it's so useful to learn different types

Programming languages all come with a specific mental model for how you're supposed to code in the language. That's why it's so useful to learn different types of languages so that you "pick up" those different ways of thinking. Everybody thinks differently so not every language is going to suit the tastes of every developer. You may find that Lua or Ruby are a better fit with your thinking patterns and that you are more productive using one of those as a scripting language of choice. The power of scripting languages really come down to a very simple thing: each line of code in a scripting language is equivalent to roughly 5 to 10 lines in a systems programming language. You're doing the same mundane programming tasks but with fewer lines and getting nearly the same performance as if you had written the code in one of the systems languages. It really won't make much difference which one you use, you'll see the same productivity gains using Perl, Ruby, Python, Lua or practically any of the others. However, the more obscure the language you choose, the fewer developers and the fewer available libraries to use.