Development Ties

On the last day of CFUnited 2005, a group of us were out on the patio having a final drink together. I got into a conversation with Clark Valberg about linguistics. I was a translator in latter half of my time in the military, and Clark was asking if I thought my experience with learning another language had helped me in learning to be a better developer?

I absolutely agreed. I have an aptitude for languages, and always have. It's something I've picked up, and I can generally get to a point where I can effectively communicate (at least on the simplest of terms) within a very short time. Programming isn't much different, if you think about it. When I first got into computing again, after leaving the Army, I was teaching myself ten different programming languages at the same time. I had a lot of catching up to do, being out of the game for so long, so I picked up some books, found online resources, and took to the task of getting up to speed.

Maybe that's why there are so many talented developers outside the US. In the US, we aren't required to learn another language out of necessity, whereas in most other countries of the world (not all, but most) it is very commonplace for people to speak two or more languages.

You can kind of apply this in the reverse, to some degree, as well. Those who only learn one development platform may be limiting themselves. Knowing one programming language inside and out can be a good thing, but learning others can also open a developer to new ways of approaching a challenge. I've known many developers who knew a server-side language (ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, whatever), but never bothered to learn JavaScript, or how to write well formed XHTML. To me, that's limiting. Even crippling.

What are your thoughts?