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I wonder if learning languages also helps your coding skills. I was recently hitting a wall on a big project I'm coding, feeling a bit down, and decided to take

I wonder if learning languages also helps your coding skills. I was recently hitting a wall on a big project I'm coding, feeling a bit down, and decided to take a break and watch some Japanese movies and TV shows with subtitles. I studied Japanese in college, and have some basic language skills, but I hadn't been exposed to the language in quite a while. After a couple days, I was often thinking about Japanese vocab and expressions, and then I went back to my coding project, and made several big breakthroughs. Likely the most significant change was the way I phrased my Google queries when looking for solutions. Could be a coincidence, or maybe flexing your language muscles a bit helps inspire your coding as well.

chez17 14y ago
It is scientifically proven that REM sleep helps solve problems. I'm not saying the other things don't play a part, but if you are giving a problem and you get REM sleep you do statistically better on it afterwards then people who had the same amount of time to think about it but did not get REM sleep.
wslh 14y ago
In my social circle I don't see the correlation. A friend from MIT speaks fluently more than 7 different languages and he is not an above the average developer. On the other side I know many excellent developers who are popular on their sector (e.g. games, security) and they only speak one language fluently.