Ditto anyone who said ocaml or haskell. :-)

But, seriously, if you don't already know C, I'd learn that first. It is extremely useful to have a good understanding of how real (vs. virtual) machines work, to get close to the metal, as they say. C will give you that.

Then I'd learn Java.

Sure, both those languages have syntax similar to each other and Perl... but syntax is the least of your worries. The conceptual model behind each of them is significantly different, yet not so exotic as to be very difficult to comprehend.

But, seriously, if you don't already know C, I'd learn that first. It is extremely useful to have a good understanding of how real (vs. virtual) machines work, to get close to the metal, as they say. C will give you that.

I know some C, as I also wrote here I plainly forgot mentioning it in New programming language suggestions.

Then I'd learn Java.

I don't like Java. More precisely there are some aspects of it that I like, but there are more that I don't like. All in all I think I'd better start over again with C++ and then switching to Java shouldn't be so much of a shock. Except for the different conceptual model behind them to which you refer with your insightful and somewhat unexpected comment.

Okay, next idea. FORTH is the genesis for the OpenBOOT initiative which underlies some recent system boot processes including Sun & FreeBSD. Imagine a coding system which can give you a complete interactive console-based IDE in 2K bytes booting your entire modern PC!

Indeed a friend of mine asked me if I knew any (thing about) FORTH, since he discovered it is at the basis of the boot system of his mac. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same thing as you're talking about, but it sounds like it is. I'll check your link ASAP.

The suggestion has been made many times, but I'll echo it. Learn C and make and study the source code of FreeBSD or Linux... so much to learn!!!

Oh C... I thought my fist post was quite comprehensive, and I forgot nothing the less than C!! Well, I used to know C, and C++, but it's over a decade I don't touch them any more. Indeed I do want to re-gain at least some confidence with them, but one of the main reasons why I want to is to learn XS programming. So this is a separate issue...

Mac OS X is Free/NetBSD wrapped around a Carnegie-Mellon MACH kernel. Yes, it is OpenBoot.

For something rather radical, try Prolog. It's a logic programming language. As such, instead of telling the computer how to solve a problem, you tell it what the problem looks like and it figures out how to solve it. You can also install my pure Perl Prolog implementation AI-Prolog to get a simple Prolog shell and programming environment.

Later, you can check out SWI-Prolog for a full-featured implementation. The Amzi! Prolog folks also offer a great (and free) online Prolog tutorial. By the time you're done, you'll have built several Prolog programs and get a good idea of how the language works.

In fact, one nice thing you'll note is the ability to change the syntax on the fly. That combined with built-in grammars allows you to type in natural English (or whatever your preferred native language is) and still get things done.

Seconded, but for a broader reason.

Learn languages which are not merely procedural. Most of the languages simply describe the way to structure data and manipulate data. Essentially, they lay out the opcodes which the machine will execute in order. Go for something that diverges from that: do things with logical, declarative, inference, numerical, symbolic, even visual languages. At the very least, you'll gain insights on how to express procedural code which solves problems more effectively.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

I second that too. I have "obviously" (due to my studies) some experience with TeX, and in particular with LaTeX which are markup languages, but to a large extent less "static" than more common *ML ones. I also tried MetaPost to draw some graphs, and I noticed it has some declarative features, e.g. a point can be defined implicitly in terms of the intersection of two straigh lines. Quite a niche application, but interesting indeed...

So, I'm not sure if it is different enough from C or perl as you would like, but it was partially derived from the above mentioned SNOBOL, so although it looks similar (to c and perl), I think it has enough differences that you might at least find it interesting.

-Scott

Update: made it more clear as to what Icon looked similar to.

Icon was Ralph Griswold's next crack at a language after SNOBOL5. He was a prof at U of Arizona when I was there and one of his students was the teacher of a comparative languages course and he threw SNOBOL at us. I was a frosh and this was a 272 course, but comparing Pascal to LISP to APL to SNOBOL to CDC6400 assembler was awesome. Quite the brain-stretcher, it {SNOBOL} was all about pattern matching. Many functional and logic programming languages take elements from SNOBOL, as do RegEx engines.

comparing Pascal to LISP to APL to SNOBOL to CDC6400 assembler was awesome

Has a similar 200 level course at my undergrad. The year I took it was quite good. A couple of years afterwords, a new prof took over the course, and to limit the amount of year to year code reuse (ahem), he mixed up the program assignment and the language. For example, instead of coding the missionary and cannibal program in Lisp, he had them do it in Snobol. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth :-|

--MidLifeXis

Indeed The same person I mentioned in here suggested either Scheme or "if I dare" Common Lisp, also suggesting upon a further request of mine
• CLISP: "light and 'simple'",
• SBCL: "fast and powerful. But also complex",
as implementations, and
• CLiki the common lisp wiki: "to begin with", and the books
• Practical Common Lisp,
• Successful Lisp,
as learning resources; and The CHICKEN Scheme Compiler for Scheme.

I'd second the vote for Practical Common Lisp. Very nice learn-Lisp book indeed.

This other node has also a lot of good sugestions.

I knew Ook! but I prefer COW, and I am aware of quite a few other "exotic" languages including, but not limited to HQ9+ and the (far more than) pythonesque Whitespace.

Many people find this too difficult to learn and use a translator.

Funny! I must say that one of the links you provided mentions that they are "sometimes wrongly but understandably mistaken for Scots" ("or Irish [...]") Well, I must say that having read Trainspotting in "English" I notice some similarities between its anglicized Scots and this Geordie. Actually, after having finished the book, it was relatively easy to compose some simple phrases (hopefully) in its style. Indeed I remember having written one such remark (link @ GG) in answer to a troll (yeah, yeah, I know) in clpmisc. To quote myself:

On 4 Sep 2006 14:11:14 -0700, "Skybuck" <skybuck2000@hotmail.com>
wrote:

[loads ay shite]

Oh ma perr wee lassie! Hud ah kent ye wir such a lurvely cunt ah
wid've joined yir cyberwar n aw fir sure, likesay. Sae long...
[download]

BTW: you can insert links more easily with PM's shortcuts, e.g. [http://www.geordie.org.uk/|translator] will render as translator.

You made it sound like Ruby is close to Perl. The only thing close is the sigil. I would rather say that Ruby is close to Python, Java and C#.

Want something quite different, Haskell and LISP are in order.

Want something OO? Learn all of them: SmallTalk, Java, Ruby, C#, C++ and see the different flavors.