Alan Perlis said "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." The whole point of learning a new computer language

Alan Perlis said "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." The whole point of learning a new computer language is to change the way you structure your thoughts and to give you a new mental vocabulary for expressing ideas. I believe a similar argument can be made for human languages, and I think that's probably what EWD was getting at. I was, at one point, fluent in Latin (that is, could converse with a knowledgeable speaker at full speed), and I believe that my knowledge of Latin had a profound effect on the way my brain analyzes languages. I'm sure that, if I learned Japanese or another language that is drastically different from English, it would have a similar effect. Would it directly make me a better programmer? Probably not. Would it make me a smarter human being? Probably so, and in doing so, it could have an indirect effect on my programming skills.