It's good to broaden your horizon, but I don't give to much weigth to knowing lots of languages. Small domain languages can be useful, but the added value of knowing more general purpose languages rapidly decreases IMO

–hsm

I immediately thought of Claude Levi-Strauss' remark "Language conditions thought." and wondered if you would agree or not?

Didn't his brother or cousin go into genetic research? I mean, as a kid, growing up, I was always hearing something about "Levi-Strauss Genes".

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

That's twisted<g>!

–hsm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing…it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."

Since I don't know that remark, let alone its context, I've no opinion about it.

Abigail

Well since I can't lay my hands on the context (and must admit to the possibility that it was Noam Chomsky and not Levi-Strauss) I'll have to make do with yet another quote:"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." by Benjamin Lee Whorf. Which I've always applied to computer languages even though both (I think) were intended to describe what linguists would call 'real' language. To hack the words of my betters, while language may express the solution, it limits the solution set as well. This leads me to suggest some value in knowing more than one language. Hence my curiosity over your view(s).

–hsm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing…it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."