"Learn at least one new [programming] language every year. Different languages solve the same problems in different ways. By learning several different approaches, you can help broaden your thinking and avoid getting stuck in a rut."

so sayeth the Pragmatic Programmers.

Last year’s language for me was Lua.  I didn’t really say much about it, because…well, mostly lazy, but also I found limited application for it.  It’s a nice tight little scripting language, it has high utility, loosely typed and very flexible.

Many games use Lua for interface modifiction scripting.  World of Warcraft, for instance, which is why I learned it.  The interface mods available for WoW are astounding, and one of the things I always loved about the game is that Blizzard put together a very comprehensive API and gave us geeks a lot of control over our own UI customizations by opening up a Lua interface and an XML structure for UI elements.  I even wrote a couple of mods myself, nothing spectacular, but they were handy, I liked them, and they helped me learn Lua.

This year’s language is going to be F#.  The Mad Scientist is likely a little concerned that one so brash as I is going to be bull-in-a-china-shopping my way around such a respectable, and dare I say, academic, language.  But it’s good to have someone to answer my questions.

I think I’ll tackle a human language as well.  Any suggestions?  I’m competent enough in Spanish, so not that.  And I’ll take a pass on asian languages for now.  But if you know a language, and would be willing to exchange email/iM conversations with me while I learn (I believe conversing to be helpful), or whatever, let me know.