Cory Petosky wrote: > In the end, though, the advantage to learning multiple languages is > that you'll be better at what you do. No question. It's been common > knowledge among programmers since the 1970s.
I have to agree with Cory. I've been programming since 1981, and, to stay employed, I have needed to learn Basic, COBOL, Fortran, Assembler, RPG, Pascal, C, C++, HTML, JavaScript, VBScript, XSLT, Lingo, ActionScript (3 versions), and probably some others that I can't recall at the moment. (For the record, my all-time favorite is ActionScript 3.) I'm not saying that to boast, but to point out how quickly the industry changes, and how adaptable you need to be. The ability to learn new languages, and apply the algorithms you know to the new syntax, is crucial. You young whippersnappers may not realize it, but ActionScript 3 will be obsolete so quickly you won't know what happened. Flash itself may be obsolete--it's already being replaced by Flex for a lot of code-heavy apps. Look what happened to Director and Shockwave, once the king of the RIA. When I started programming, only a few academics and military types knew what a network was, nobody had e-mail, and even the term "hyperlink" was a dreamer's concept. Nobody knows what computer science will look like in 10 years, much less 25. How many people here know how to program a quantum computer where the unit of information is the Quark, which is not binary, but may have 28 different states? Programming languages are much like human languages. Learning a second language makes it much easier to learn a third, then a fourth, and so on. Plus, knowing another language helps you understand your primary language better. I speak from experience (so to speak), as I learned Chinese as an adult. It was a revelation, as was learning Assembler. Don't get complacent with your AS3 or AS2 knowledge. You'll get stuck in a rut, and your understanding of computers will be limited. Ask any programmer who has done significant assembly-language programming. There's nothing like getting close to the machine, on the bit level, to help you understand what's happening in your ActionScript code, and how to optimize and organize it. Cordially, Kerry Thompson _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
