[mikepurvis]

But I think the point should be to get at least a taste of either end of every one of those continuums, so that you get a broad overview of what kinds of problems are well suited to different sets of tradeoffs. For another silly example, see the difference between rust’s collect and using generators in Python. Same end result with very different semantics.

Without this, there’s a risk that the “learning” is just tunneling in on your own pre-existing prejudices (insert hammer-nail metaphor here).

[mattkrause]

This holds for natural languages too!

I did a linguistics degree as an undergrad, and one of the requirements was coursework/proficiency in two different foreign languages. Unless you planned on actually using both of them, you were strongly encouraged to choose very different languages, rather than (say) Spanish and Italian.

Having learnt a Romance language, I took a year of intensive Japanese (the tones in Chinese were a bridge too far). It was a nightmarish amount of memorization and I juste eked out a passing grade, but the exposure to totally different writing, grammatical, and honorific systems was also really fascinating.

[nuancebydefault]

I understand what you mean and I agree for the most part. Still, there are multiple degrees of freedom for choosing languages, any list is just a proposal.

[mikepurvis]

Right, but the presence of all those degrees means it’s valuable to at least dabble in many different languages, vs asserting that a list of just a few basically has it covered.