

Ask HN:Does being a polyglot(programmer) helps improve coding? - gamebit07

The advantages of bilingulaism has been a topic of much research. Eg.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=1. I held the opinion that learning french <i>might</i> not help me write better english?<p>Learning french might provide its own learning experience and probably few cells in the brain will get activated making it sharper. My question is does learning two prog. languages help coders write better code?<p>Can the same concept be extended to programming languages as well? Can learning java help you write better C code? 
Here is a personal experience from a friend of mine:<p>"I spend years trying to understand C pointers in vain, and only understood them after I learn Java. People say Java has no pointers. Actually every (non primitive) var in Java is a pointer, which references and derferences automatically."<p>Say i am a django developer and i learn RoR can learning RoR help me improve the django code i write or are they mutually exclusive.<p>What does the community think of it.<p>Thanks.
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stonemetal
Depends on the languages. Learning python and ruby, or Java and C# then not so
much (it will just remind you of the Steve Martin quote "what is it with the
french it is like they have a different word for everything"). Learn Java and
Haskell then learning one will make certain misfeatures in one obvious and
provide a clean logical way to think about what is going on(anonymous inner
classes vs higher order functions.)

