Old guy rambling follows
Learning a new language can be seen by some as a "waste of time". I don't; it's my hobby. I'll clarify the statement. IMHO, programming is for fun or for profit. If it's for fun; let it be a waste of time. Time well spent. If it is for profit; then I'd classify it as two kinds of profit. For cash and to free time for more fun.
One of the motivations in my life has been a quest for the perfect PIM and to write better docs. So when I sit to learn something new in computing I try and see if it will help me save time keeping personal information organized or help with simplifying complex document writing.
Just so ya know; I have yet to find a PIM that beats a plain ASCII text file and my trusted field message pad and mechanical pencil.
But I'm not going to give up. Regarding doc writing, I have ended up with a plethora of small utilities (usually one offs) but I continually find myself writing; REBOL, AWK, SNOBOL or Icon programs for this to help organize the LaTeX (or other markup) sources. (Along with shell scripts to glue the pieces together).
So, after reading up on the key features list for a language and trying to see how cool I feel they are, I try and write a program to see how hard it will be to beat plain ASCII text for a PIM. REBOL came really really close for me and I hope REBOL/3 will finally let me have a PIM where the data is code and the code is the data. So that covers the fun part.
Making cash is a completely different animal. Yes, work should be enjoyable; but that doesn't really mean fun. It should be work. Unless you work for yourself, you are trading your time for someone else's money. So it is no longer your time. And I don't mean self-employed contractor. I mean something like developing your own software system on your own dime and then selling it (or giving it away) on your own.
Life is quite short when it comes to building expertise. One benchmark being
Quote:
In many domains of expertise estimates of 10 years experience or 10,000 hours deliberate practice are common.
From answers.com topic expert. So you might be able to call yourself expert in 5 work related areas throughout a career; probably less.
This is a personal opinion, but pick C as one of your areas of expertise. Learning C is somewhat trivial (it has keywords counted in the tens), but expertise in C can be a lifelong challenge. Along with C (and I'll count C++ in that), pick a scripting language that tickles your fancy. In that area, the choices are huge, but if the plan is to make money, check the TIOBE index for some hints on what employers are paying for. I'm a rebol, and I plan on putting in the 10'000 hours in the shortest time span that I can. (I'll prod you to check out REBOL to see why I used 10'000 instead of 10,000 in that last statement). I also prod people to try Icon. Icon is a very, very high level language that can take decades to come to grips with (sometimes the fun of Icon actually feels like work).
Tonight I start playing with the Falcon programming language. Looks cool and it might let me plop an entry down for rizzix's Actor Model challenge.
In short. Apply your interests to a programming language to see if it can make you happy. Once the fun runs out, then decide if you can use the skills for work. If you think it can, then it's time to grind through code. Lots and lots of code. 10,000 hours is a lot of hours.
Cheers
