why learn a new programming language?

a friend asked me this yesterday. “why are you learning a new programming language?” I had to stop and think about this for a while.

I have been working with the LAMP stack from the time I started building software. I have tried different languages in between. Ruby(on Rails), Python, Node.js and a few other flavours of JS frameworks are other languages I tried in between based on project requirements. I never got a chance to spend a lot of time with these other languages, though.

There are quite a lot of programming languages available to learn out there. Should I deep dive into Python or Ruby that I have spent time with before? or learn something new? These questions have been a question on my mind for a few weeks now. I never really liked the other languages that much, though. I enjoyed working with C and C++, and PHP was a natural extension to these languages.

Go from what I read online, “is modern C language”.

Why learn something new, though? To break away from the routine. To decide if the next language is something I also want to spend more time with. After spending more than nine years with PHP, I now feel ready to pick up a few other languages that I want to learn. Keep the brain active.

I look forward to the next challenge. PHP will always be a language that I spend a lot of time with(for now), but from now on, I want to challenge myself to learn a new language every year. This year is the year of Go.

Sunil Shenoy @sunil
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