in reply to Perl with other languages

So my question here is, do any of you code or are pretty handy with any other programming languages and if so, which ones?

I do most of my work in Perl, with a smattering of JavaScript and various UNIX shell languages (for web based stuff, and cron jobs and/or sysadmin utilities, as appropriate).

As for which languages I'm 'handy' with, I've been pretty good with a few languages, but I've not used them in so long aside from minor debugging that I have no idea how good I am anymore in them (PHP, C Fortran, VBA, PL/SQL). I've recently been doing some work in IDL (Interactive Data Language, not Interface Description Language), and there are a number of languages that I haven't touched in years, that I've basically forgotten them (LPC, C++, Logo, Basic/Basica, CFScript, 68k assembler, Pascal, HyperScript). I've also done some work debugging/modifying programs in languages that I don't know (copy & paste coding ... I mean 'coding by example') ... mostly Java, Python and AppleScript.

Does learning more languages make you a better programmer? Well, yes and no ... They make you think about the problems in different ways ... sometimes it's because a language doesn't have a feature that you're used to, but sometimes it's because it has better ways of handling the same logic. (eg, IDL doesn't have a concept of an empty array, or a foreach loop, but it does have 'where', which returns the array indices that match a given expression)

In other cases, I find it's easier to learn some concepts in specific languages (sort of like Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' -- you had to learn Martian so you could then understand the concepts before Mike could teach you the higher sciences). I got most of my OO lessons in LPC, concepts of optimization in assembly, structuring your programs in Pascal, etc.