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Unread 23-07-2013, 21:17
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Re: The One-language-per-year Challenge

Quote:
Originally Posted by rsisk View Post
I'll throw out a reason. Learning multiple languages helps you learn to think in terms of programming structures, or design patterns, ie., you become more meta and less syntax.

That said, I would probably use a base language year over year and have off season challenges to re-implement in a new language. Then switch if your team decides it wants to.
I can definitely see the benefit of multiple languages. In fact, when I first saw this thread, I thought it was a challenge to learn a new language every year, but as an individual rather than as an entire team, and thought "wow, that's a really cool idea." And even having a team to try to learn some of the other languages during the off-season would be pretty cool, although I could think of better things to be spending code training time on. Coding your competition robot in a different language every year, though, is just counter-productive. One of the biggest problems I could see teams running into is having mentors who only know one of the languages well, then having to find new mentors every year because the old ones decide not to try to learn the new language.