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> I would also recommend that beginners/early programmers learn 1 programming language really well That's a dangerous approach. The first language is very har

> I would also recommend that beginners/early programmers learn 1 programming language really well That's a dangerous approach. The first language is very hard to learn, because, well, it's your first. And when you stick to one language, you easily conflate the syntax and the semantics. So when you learn a second language, you have to unlearn the syntax of the first, in addition to learn the genuinely different concepts. Distinguishing the similar stuff in new clothes from the actual new stuff is hard. Simply put, learning the second languages will be very hard as well. Now your programmer has two data point, and knows with their gut that learning a new programming language is hard. This sets expectation, an will make it harder to learn additional languages. It will take some time to realise learning a new language, besides a few insane exceptions like C++, is not that hard. > ignore the din of people on the internet who claim to effortlessly, expertly jump among 10 languages as part of their day-to-day. Jumping from language to language may not be that easy. But one can certainly be an expert at 20 programming languages. Once you see the commonalities, there isn't much to learn. Really, a good course in programming languages is enough to get you started. The hard part is memorising 20 big programming frameworks, with all their warts, special cases and so on. Still, if you know the concepts, learning the vocabulary takes little time.

jordanpg 11y ago
I just don't see it. No one would ever recommend learning Spanish and Mandarin at the same time, for any reason. All of the things you said are true, and yet the beginner has only so much time, so much patience, so much learning to do in one day. Given this, I see larger advantages to spending all of that time and energy in one ecosystem. There are many perspectives on, say, Java coding styles, patterns, and idioms. One need not go outside a language to do that. And I would further argue that you simply cannot (usefully) see the global commonalities and idioms among languages until you've been doing this for a while. Years. As for experienced programmers, I've not known any "experts" at 20 languages, ever. My point was really that this idea is simply the result of run-of-the-mill internet hyperbole.
- macNchz 11y ago
  Learning two programming languages at the same time is definitely not comparable to learning Spanish and Mandarin at the same time...those two languages are so different that you won't gain anything from it. Learning, say, Spanish and Italian at the same time might be a better analogy, since you'll start to see word roots and constructions that are shared among romance languages. I think learning more than one programming language at the same time is a great way to help you tease out basic programming concepts from the vagaries in the syntax of an individual language. How to types work? Scopes? Functions? Loops? Arrays? Hash tables? Those are all things that, once you really grok as separate from, say, whitespace problems in Python or curly brace issues in C, allow you to much more easily read and eventually pick up other languages.
  - codexjourneys 11y ago
    Although I can't speak to learning two spoken languages simultaneously, learning a language similar to one I already knew (I knew Spanish, tried to learn Italian) was insanely difficult, because my brain couldn't distinguish them enough. It would get in a loop of searching for Italian words and running into Spanish words and then mixing them up. On the other hand, learning German after already knowing Spanish was much easier -- and it was much easier to see the similarities and differences between the languages, because my brain would find the Spanish phrase while searching for the German one, and vice versa, but wouldn't get stuck in a loop about it.
- gohrt 11y ago
  > No one would ever recommend learning Spanish and Mandarin at the same time American? :-) Huge portions of the world (Europe and Asia especially) raise children bilingually.
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    Which by the way has practical advantages. While the child takes a bit longer to learn those languages, it configures her brain in a particular way that makes it possible to think effortlessly in both languages, from the start. I suspect, (but don't know) this even facilitates the learning of other languages, later on.

jordanpg 11y ago

I just don't see it. No one would ever recommend learning Spanish and Mandarin at the same time, for any reason. All of the things you said are true, and yet the beginner has only so much time, so much patience, so much learning to do in one day. Given this, I see larger advantages to spending all of that time and energy in one ecosystem. There are many perspectives on, say, Java coding styles, patterns, and idioms. One need not go outside a language to do that. And I would further argue that you simply cannot (usefully) see the global commonalities and idioms among languages until you've been doing this for a while. Years. As for experienced programmers, I've not known any "experts" at 20 languages, ever. My point was really that this idea is simply the result of run-of-the-mill internet hyperbole.

macNchz 11y ago
Learning two programming languages at the same time is definitely not comparable to learning Spanish and Mandarin at the same time...those two languages are so different that you won't gain anything from it. Learning, say, Spanish and Italian at the same time might be a better analogy, since you'll start to see word roots and constructions that are shared among romance languages. I think learning more than one programming language at the same time is a great way to help you tease out basic programming concepts from the vagaries in the syntax of an individual language. How to types work? Scopes? Functions? Loops? Arrays? Hash tables? Those are all things that, once you really grok as separate from, say, whitespace problems in Python or curly brace issues in C, allow you to much more easily read and eventually pick up other languages.
- codexjourneys 11y ago
  Although I can't speak to learning two spoken languages simultaneously, learning a language similar to one I already knew (I knew Spanish, tried to learn Italian) was insanely difficult, because my brain couldn't distinguish them enough. It would get in a loop of searching for Italian words and running into Spanish words and then mixing them up. On the other hand, learning German after already knowing Spanish was much easier -- and it was much easier to see the similarities and differences between the languages, because my brain would find the Spanish phrase while searching for the German one, and vice versa, but wouldn't get stuck in a loop about it.
gohrt 11y ago
> No one would ever recommend learning Spanish and Mandarin at the same time American? :-) Huge portions of the world (Europe and Asia especially) raise children bilingually.
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Which by the way has practical advantages. While the child takes a bit longer to learn those languages, it configures her brain in a particular way that makes it possible to think effortlessly in both languages, from the start. I suspect, (but don't know) this even facilitates the learning of other languages, later on.