Ask HN: When would you learn a new computer language, and why?

[ColinWright]

I've been learning a new computer language recently, and I'm finding it intriguing. Not yet at the point where I can use it "in anger", but I'm close to the point of choosing it for some of my everyday scripting tasks. It would take longer, but would help me to learn it.

So ...

Would you learn a new language?

What would induce you to do so?

[AnimalMuppet]

I'd learn a new language in two different scenarios:

1. If I were paid to do so. What would make me do so? Getting paid, of course. (Note that "getting paid" could mean "I think it's the thing I need to learn for the next stage of my career".) But if the boss doesn't pick a language and say "learn this", then for me to pick a language, it has to be significantly better in some way for writing the kinds of programs that I write to earn my money. That's kind of a high bar. Maybe one language every several years passes that threshold.

2. If I wanted to. This is a completely different set of answers. Here, I want to learn the language for my own project, or just because I think it's cool. To actually do so, I have to want to learn that language more than I want the other things I can spend my free time on. That also is a high bar, because I have a fair number of non-computer things that I really want to do.

[PaulHoule]

For one thing, if I had a paying job to write code in that language.

I have rarely had a problem jumping languages. For instance with a lot of Java experience I got a C# job. With experience in the semantic web I got a Python job which got me ready to get more Python job, etc.

[version_five]

I would love a professional excuse to have to learn a new language.

I learned C/C++ (the latter now completely out of date) and Java through the late 90s / early 2000s, and also used matlab extensively for scripting.

In the last 10 years I have learned python (crticial mass in data science / ML), bash/coreutils/awk (practicality based on work environment, was always aware to some extent but now full time on linux and these have been game changing), Julia (personal interest, sold on how powerful it can be for my area, even if it's still rough around the edges), Scheme (not proficient but read SICP and worked to follow the examples, so I see it as an instructional language that helps me thing about how to do thing)

On my list are go (critical mass, interesting systems programming stuff), F# (an excuse to do FP and want to take diffsharp for a spin), less pressing, I'd like to try Zig or a similar "C replacement".

Would also add that in python which I do every day, I am always learning new libraries plus different (e.g. trying to be pure FP just for fun) ways of doing stuff.

So TLDR, yes I would learn a new language, and I'd be induced to by curiosity about different ways of doing things mostly. What actually gets me to dig in is probably having some professional way to justify spending the time.