The benefits of learning languages that you won

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Closed 8 years ago.

I have read numerous time that learning a language such as Haskell, Lisp or Smalltalk will somehow make you a better programmer while you program in other languages.

Is there more than just anecdotal evidence for that claim? Or is it just the way people rationalize having spend a lot of time learning a programming language that they will never use?

Answer 1

Can't shed much light on this in terms of programming languages, but it seems very similar to the "why learn a dead language?" argument that surrounds Latin, and much of the reasoning there can be applied here.