It's always been pretty easy to learn any language "on the go" if dropped directly into a functioning codebase, with practical tasks to undertake in it. Even th

It's always been pretty easy to learn any language "on the go" if dropped directly into a functioning codebase, with practical tasks to undertake in it. Even the "horror movie" languages you called out which obviously many many people have learned. LLMs do make it easier, essentially by giving anyone the opportunity to to drop into a working codebase and take on practical tasks inside it. I think 15 years ago I would have called out the imperative/functional divide as an exception, and that probably does still add challenge. But programming languages have progressed a lot, with imperative languages exposing you to a lot of functional concepts and functional languages having better ergonomics around state/IO.