*hypf*

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is an interesting concept in linguistics that basically states that the language(s) you speak affect the thoughts you are able to think and your understanding. Now I read an interesting connection to programming languages by Jeff Moser.

I never thought that this may apply to programming languages as well, but it seems reasonable. Paul Graham notes such a thing as The Blub Paradox where he explains that one's choice of programming language usually determines an opinion towards inferior ones („How anyone can get anything done with it. It doesn't even have x (Blub feature of your choice)“) and towards more powerful ones („He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.“). Blub is the language the programmer thinks in and it inevitably determines his way of solving problems and judging other tools for solving them.

Probably that's the reason why we (CS students at Uni Rostock) were told that learning programming is not about mastery of one programming language, but rather solving problems in as many languages as possible. To prevent lock-in to one particular language and the thinking connected to it.

That said, I still won't learn Perl :-)