How Many Programming Languages Should I learn

Jun 22, 2019 · 2 mins read

Has it ever occurred to you, that you see a new programming language and you feel an urge to learn it? If love hobby programming then I’m pretty sure that you’ve had this dilemma of choosing whether to learn a language or not. Sometimes the fear of missing out makes us want to learn as many languages as possible. But how many languages do we actually need to learn?

Every language out there have their specialty that makes it worth learning. But here’s what you should really keep in mind before learning a new language - that is, goal-based learning.

You should focus on the goal you’d like to achieve in the long run, not just the language itself. Just knowing a language wouldn’t benefit you. After all, it is just a tool, and having a tool is useless unless you’re using it for something. Additionally, a tool not being used will get rusty. If you don’t use a language after learning it, you’ll forget it. That’s time and hard work wasted.

Ask yourself, what am I going to do after learning this language? If you have a clear answer go for it. If not, you’re probably not going to need it soon.

It has been quite a while since Rust came out. It’s like a more modern C++. I almost wanted to learn it. But then I realized, I’m not really a system programmer and neither do I intend to be one soon. So it’s probably not worth it for me to learn it yet.

I was a Java guy before I started to do machine learning. After exploring ML out a bit I found that the Python libraries are easier and more helpful to do ML. I knew I’d need ML in the long run, so it was then when I decided that I need to learn Python.

So the thing is, learn programming languages as the need arises. Don’t learn them for the sake of learning. You’ll be wasting your time and energy.

Sometimes, knowing a lot of languages is helpful. If you’re into security then knowing a lot of languages is definitely a plus. Senior developers may need to know multiple languages if they are supervising teams that work with multiple languages. But they don’t learn it all at once. As the years go by, they gradually pick up new languages.

So, remember boys (and gals), goal-based learning!