The differences between Fortran, Lisp, C, Prolog, Smalltalk, APL and ML are wildly more extreme than Python, Java, C++, JavaScript and Rust. Languages like Hask

The differences between Fortran, Lisp, C, Prolog, Smalltalk, APL and ML are wildly more extreme than Python, Java, C++, JavaScript and Rust. Languages like Haskell and OCaml are natural evolutions of ML work done in the 70s, just like Clojure is for Lisp. That list of languages that existed prior to 1980s is still considered a must learn set of languages for any serious programming aficionado. All of the more recent languages tend to exist in the "learn one and learn it well" category provided you already have experience in the pre-1980s languages. The major exception to this would be Haskell, but that's more so because it has basically taken the throne and the modern heir the the ML kingdom. That's not to say there hasn't been some really interesting work in programming languages since the 1980s, but it's very similar to OS world (we never really moved past the age of UNIX). We've largely established the major paradigms of programming and refined them rather than really breaking new ground.