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> Because of some of my programming teachers, I had a feeling that JavaScript is not a “real” programming language. In addition, it was JavaScript in the frontend environment, so you know, moving divs and buttons around, not algorithms. Well, it certainly does not live up to the standards of languages, which those people would call "real programming languages". So while they are doing a true scotchman thing there, there is also some truth at the core of it. If we remember JS how it was a decade or more ago, and what JS today still keeps downwards-compatibility with, it is easy to see, how the very foundations are flawed, to say the least. Self-respecting computer scientists, professors or not, will most likely not accept those shaky foundations as something worthy. Anyway, it is not the pure count of programming languages, but rather the count of programming language families one got to know, that makes the difference. If all one ever touches are languages out of the algol family, then it will have far far less benefit, compared to trying out languages from various families. For example one will learn much more, trying out SQL, a lisp, an APL, Prolog and a Smalltalk dialect, a language with stytic typing and a langauge with dynamic typing, than from trying out Java, C++ and C# and the like. This is because the various different families do things vastly differently and require you to switch your brain into different modes, while languages of the same family will mostly only make you learn a new syntax and new built-in function names. |