Related
By that I mean languages where they are stable and the standard has stopped being actively worked on, and they offer something interesting by studying them.
I am not looking for normal imperative /procedural languages that have stopped being worked on (i.e. C-like) unless of course it was something that c is based off like ALGOL.
They can be languages that run on any platform (not just unix/osx/win), it can run on a toaster for all I care, I just want it to be something interesting.
I am looking to be amazed :)
You should check an esoteric languages.
There is a site, esolangs.org that has a huge list of the esoteric languages, an informations about paradigms/concepts, a list of ideas and many more.
From the esolangs.org, the esoteric language is:
An esoteric programming language is a computer programming language
designed to experiment with weird ideas, to be hard to program in, or
as a joke, rather than for practical use.
Here are some examples from that site:
BF - using just a ><+-.,[] symbols
Piet - image as a source code
Let's say a tester is to do some programming to create automated tests ... is Lua really easy to learn for someone who is not a developer?
It depends on the particular non-developer in question. Some people will utterly block on any programming language at all. Some will easily grok many languages and basic programming concepts. There is no silver bullet for putting the power of programming in the hands of someone who is untested on it.
That being said, my personal feeling is that Lua is as good of a place to start as any other programming language.
The Lua language has an active and usually novice-friendly community. It has a long history of use on the boundary between non-programmers and programmers. The language reference manual and standard text book are among the best written examples I've seen in my career. The full text of the reference manual is online, and the first edition of Programming in Lua is as well, although the second edition of PiL reflects the differences in the language that happened after PiL was first published and is well worth the investment to purchase.
One of Lua's strengths is the ease with which it can be integrated into an existing system to construct a configuration and scripting interface to an application. That makes the development cost to adopt it relatively low. Its small size makes the impact on an application release remarkably low as well. Thus getting an existing system to the point where it can be scripted enough with Lua to use Lua as a basis for testing will likely be a straightforward task with few hidden obstacles.
Lua is very forgiving which many people associate with "easy". You do not have to enter semi-colons, you do not have to scope variables, you can write all of your functions in the global scope. Of course doing these things only make your life easier when writing. When debugging even a new programmer may soon see why taking these short cuts is not such a good idea.
I also believe that you can write very simple, easy to use APIs in Lua and you could also create very complex APIs, which may involve object oriented concepts (such as the difference between . and :) or functional APIs with closures and passing around functions as function arguments, etc. Whether the user is able to properly use and understand the language to do the task at hand depends largely on the API as much as or more so than the language.
I do believe Lua is an easier language to learn than many others, like Ruby and Python (and obviously Perl). Lua's grammar and syntax are more consistent than Ruby's for instance; in Ruby you have so many reserved keywords, plus all sorts of symbols (curly-brackets for blocks and pipes for local variables etc), plus it gives you too many options (you can either use curly-brackets for blocks, or you can use the keywords do and end to start and end blocks).
I believe that for non-programmers Lua is much easier especially because of the reasons outlined above. As for programmers, I've read many people say this very same thing and I agree: programming in Lua is very pleasant. I believe that's also because of what I said above.
It probably is becausee its very similar to Python:
The number of universities using Python in there introductory Comp Sci courses is probably the highest of any language (empirically through google). Second probably being Java and Scheme.
The number of Python libraries is astronomical. And the number of people that know the language is quite high thus if you hire a new person there is a good chance they have seen the language before.
Ironically I have grown to not like the language so I am not saying this because I am python fan boy.
As long as you clearly explain to the testers the pitfalls that they may face when debugging in LUA it shouldn't be harder than learning the programming basics of any other language.
What goes through my mind is the situation where the tester made a typo and wrote a different, yet almost unnoticeable, name for a variable. The new variable will be created with the given value but the old variable won't be modified. That sort of thing can be pretty hard to debug when people are not extremely aware of it.
I'm a programmer for more than ten years.
I've learned and used different programming languages.
I've heard about Lua in different occasions, but I've never used it before.
Recently, I decided to learn Lua because our customers are using it.
After spending days on reading the PiL, it turned out for me that Lua is a powerful, flexible, yet sophisticated programming language.
From a software developer point of view, I don't think it's easy for me to be a good coder in Lua in a short time.
But if you just want to 'do something' with Lua, especially if you are from a background of non-programmer, you may feel pleased with Lua, which may be much easier to write some ready-to-use code than some 'traditional' language such as Java, C/C++, Python, etc.
The title may seem slightly self-contradictory, and I accept that you can't really learn a language quickly. However, an experienced programmer that already has knowledge of a few languagues and different styles (functional, OO, imperative etc.) often wants to get started quickly. I've seen a few websites doing effective "translations" in the form of "just show me syntax equivalence". I can't remember the sites now, but for related languages (e.g. Perl/PHP) it's quite common.
Is there a better resource that covers more languages? Is there a resource that covers idioms as well as syntax? I think this would be incredibly useful for doing small amounts of work on existing code bases where you are not familiar with the language. Looking at the existing code, as we know, is not always a good indicator of quality. Likewise, for "learn by doing" weekend project I always have the urge to write reasonably idiomatic, clean code from the start. Such a resource could also link to known good example projects of varying sizes for those that prefer to learn by reading. Reading a well-written medium sized code base can also be much more practical when access to development environments might be limited.
I think it's possible to find tutorials and summaries for individual languages that provide some of this functionality in disparate web locations but I'm hoping there is a good, centralised, comparative place that the busy programmer can turn to.
You generally have two main things to overcome:
Syntax
Reference
Syntax you can pick up fairly quickly with a language tutorial and a stack of samplecode.
Reference (library/API calls) you need to find a proper guide to; perhaps the language reference, or perhaps google...
With those two in place, following a walkthrough (to get you used to using the development environment) will have you pretty much ready - you'll be able to look up what you want to say (reference), and know how to say it (syntax).
This, of course, applies principally to procedural/oop languages; languages that require a paradigm switch (ML/Haskell) you should go to lectures for ;)
(and for the weirder moments, there's SO!)
In the past my favour was "learning by doing". So e.g. I know a little bit of C++ and a lot of C#.Net but I must write a FTP Tool in Python.
So I sit for an hour and so the syntax differences by a tutorial, than I develop the form itself and look at the generated code. Then I search a open source Python FTP Client and get pieces of code (Not copy and paste, write it self to see, feel and remember the code!)
After a few hours I get it.
So: The mix is the best. A book, a piece of good code, the willing to learn and a free night with much coffee.
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I would start with the language's website tutorial and/or FAQ, followed by asking more specific questions here. SO is my centralized location for programming knowledge.
I remember when I learned Perl. I was asked to modify some Perl code at work and I'd never seen the language before. I had experience with several other languages, however, so it wasn't hard to figure out the syntax with the online Perl docs in one window and the code in another, side-by-side. I don't know that solely reading existing code is necessarily the best way to learn. In my case, I didn't know Perl but I could tell that the person who originally wrote the code didn't know Perl either. I'm not sure I could've distinguished between good Perl and really confusing Perl. It would've been nice to be able to ask questions here at the time.
Language isn't important. What is important is learning your ways around designing algorithms and the proper application of design patterns. Focus on the technique, not the language that implements a certain technique. Once you understand the proper development techniques, any programming language will just become real easy, no matter how obscure they are...
When you put a focus on a language, you're restricting your own knowledge.
http://devcheatsheet.com/ seems to be a step in the right direction: it aggregates cheat sheets/quick references and they are (somewhat) manually reviewed. It's also wide-ranging. It still comes up short a bit in terms of "idiomatic" quick reference: for example, the page on Ruby doesn't mention yield.
Rosetta Code appears to be an excellent resource that includes hints on coding idiomatically and moves from simple (like for-loops) to things like drawing. I haven't checked out how comprehensive it is, but there are a large number of languages and tasks listed. The drawbacks re: original question are:
Some of the linking is not accurate
(navigating Python->ForLoop will
take you to the top of the ForLoop
page, not the Python section). It's a
wiki, this can be improved.
Ideally you could "slice" the wiki
however you chose to see e.g. the top
20 tasks for two languages
side-by-side.
http://hyperpolyglot.org/ seems to be an almost perfect match for what I was looking for. The quality is not always there, or idiom can be lacking, but it has the same intention and is pretty comprehensive.
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Closed 9 years ago.
I already have a few languages under my belt (in a rough order of expertise): Python, C, C++, PHP, Javascript, Haskell, Java, MIPS, x86 assembler. But it's been almost 2 years since I learned a new one, and I'm starting to get the itch. I have a few criteria:
Must (repeat: must) have a free Linux implementation
Should be different from the languages I already know. In other words, it should have features that get me thinking about solving problems in a new way.
Should have some potential for practical use. It doesn't need to be the next Java, but this rules out Brainf* and Shakespeare :) I don't really care how many job postings does it have, but real-world apps and libraries are a plus.
Should have at least just enough free learning materials to get me started in it.
I was thinking Lisp (CL? something else?) or OCaml. I already have some experience with functional languages with Haskell (yes I know that Lisp/OCaml are multi-paradigm). I'm not an expert - e.g. parts of code from Real World Haskell can still contort my brain, but I understand the basic concepts and some advanced ones (functors, monads).
Which one to choose? Any other languages that I have overlooked? Also, could you please include some useful links to good books/tutorials etc.
Neither Lisp nor OCaml is super far afield from what you already know. Here are four suggestions chosen partly for intrinsic interest and partly to stretch your horizons.
A logic programming language, probably Prolog. I haven't found good materials online, but the book The Art of Prolog by Sterling and Shapiro is excellent. The more basic textbook by Clocksin and Mellish is also good. The main point of interest is programming with relations, not functions.
A pure object-oriented language, either
Smalltalk or Self. If you've only used hybrid object-oriented languages you'll be amazed how beautiful pure object-orientation can be. I've linked to the Squeak implementation of Smalltalk. I personally would recommend learning Smalltalk before tackling Self; there's a very large and active community and the software is well developed. Self stands on Smalltalk's shoulders and is an even more inspiring design, but the community is much smaller. For those who have access to the ACM Digital library I recommend the excellent talk by Dave Ungar at HOPL-III; the paper is also pretty good.
The Icon programming language has two great things going for it; a powerful and unusual evaluation model with implicit backtracking, and a user-extensible model of string processing that beats regular expressions all hollow. I'm sorry to say that Icon has never quite kept pace with the times, and of all my recommendations it is the least practical. In fact I fear the language is moribund. But it will stretch your mind almost as much as Haskell, and in wildly different directions. Icon is still very useful for string-processing tasks of modest size.
You can read about Icon string processing in an article by Ralph Griswold from Computer Journal.
The Lua programming language is my last and least radical suggestion. Its interest is not so much in novel language features or paradigms but in the superb engineering of the language and its implementation. Lua occupies a number of niches, including scripting, gaming, string processing, and lightweight functional programming. But its main point of interest is its seamless integration with C, and to get the full benefit, you should bind a C library into Lua.
The HOPL-III web site also contains an excellent talk and paper about Lua.
Both Common Lisp and Ocaml are certainly useful to learn. If you already know Haskell, CL might be the more different experience.
SBCL and Clozure CL are both very useful implementations of Common Lisp on Linux. (Overview about various implementations: Common Lisp survey.)
As a starting point I would recommend to use Peter Seibel's excellent book Practical Common Lisp, that is both available online and printed.
Community pointers are here: CLIKI.
Prolog may be what you are looking for.
Edit
The first commenter is right, my answer was pretty short and not very useful, so:
My preferred implementation is SWI-Prolog. I personally learned from Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence. It's style is pretty clear and it contains many examples, but I don't own any other book on logic programming (it's a shame, really :) so I have no basis for comparison.
Erlang is pretty interesting to learn because of its super efficient concurrency model, and the ease with which you can write distributed systems (for an example of this, CouchDB was written in Erlang). It's a dynamically typed functional language, but you can also write code in a procedural fashion. The tutorial I learned it with is called "Getting Started with Erlang", which covers just about every part of the language.
If you want to make use of your Java and functional programming knowledge, and you want to learn a Lisp, then try Clojure.
The implementation is free and cross-platform including Linux, because it runs on the JVM. Being a Lisp, it's different enough (in useful and wonderful ways) from most other languages to make things interesting. Some features such as immutable data structures, multimethods, metadata support, focus on safe concurrency, etc. are fairly novel compared to the languages you listed. Clojure is geared heavily toward being a practical and useful language rather than an academic one. It's a functional language but not "pure", which is arguably a good thing. You can also trivially make use of any Java library from within Clojure.
Clojure is a new language, so the only book out so far is Programming Clojure, but it's a pretty good one. There's also a wiki which may not be entirely up-to-date, because the language is still evolving very quickly. The mailing list and IRC channel are very friendly, welcoming places to ask questions. The official website is also a good resource, of course.
I'm going to recommend something that I haven't yet tried, but plan to, so you have to judge for yourself this one. There's this language, called IO, which is particular in that its prototype-based, like JavaScript, but also borrows concepts from many other languages. Its job market it's probably nonexistent, but I thought I mention this language.
Otherwise, a language from the Lisp family may be pretty different from what you already know. In that regard I'd recommend Scheme, which is, in my opinion, more elegant than Common Lisp. The new concept that you might found interesting in Scheme is continuations.
If you take the Scheme path, make some time to watch these videos from 1986. They're amazing.
Have a look at Smalltalk ! Either Cincom VWST or Smalltalk/X - dont bother with Squeak as the interface is terrible). VAST is good also but really only Windows centric. And dont bother about the sceptics that pore scorn on Smalltalk -- they arent using it and are stuck in the morass of edit-run-debug cycle languages and multiple dispirt linked libraries. :-)
Why these Smalltalks - well, they come complete wth excellent IDE, GUI tools builtin, best debugger you will ever see, online help, and is totally independent of the underlying OS. Eg a ST/X programming running under Linux can be transfered ( source code) to Windows ST/X and it should execute.
ST/X is free with only a very minor licience restrictions, Cincom offer a free NC ( Not Commercial ) version that is NOT restricted. I use ST/X as I prefer the default look & feel
it offers. Their IDE interfaces are very similar.
Languages without a IDE & GUI tools are just wasting your time as the world is really GUI, no matter how terrific the underlying language is. Eg Ruby is great, but with no IDE or easy GUI tools its really frustrating.
Smalltalk is not easy to get into, and its not perfect,(what language is?) but very satisfying to learn & use. And now that the hardware and operating systems have finally caught up with Smalltalks needs . very efficient.
I second Rainer's Common Lisp recommendation.
CL has all the things you're looking for and will provide a genuinely novel experience that will also make your coding efforts and approaches in other languages better.
But bring patience and persistence, you will have to grasp a lot of concepts that will seem alien at first.
You could try Tcl. It was sufficiently different to provoke an adverse reaction in my brain, so I can't really tell you how I found it different, but there's been a lot of good stuff written in it (maybe less nowadays than earlier).
C# has a free implementation in Linux under the Mono project, and it arguably is a very marketable skill unless you're completely anti-Microsoft.
My favorite C# book is Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition.
If you're really want exotic, F# is an OCaml style language that runs on the .NET platform and mono, and is getting a lot of attention these days.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/fsharp/default.aspx
Books for F#:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=f%23
Of the suggestions I've seen so far, I like Lisp (see Secko) and Smalltalk (see brett), as both will give you another view of languages. Prolog even more so.
Another language that is different is Erlang -- I haven't had a chance to learn it yet, but it handles concurrency in a different way. The best link I can give you is the main website.
In terms of recommendations, Lisp is good both because it is currently used and because it is very old. The others you will have to look at sources and see which one appeals the most.
Try FORTRAN, then? I hear it's still actively used by the scientific and mathemematical communities, plus it should be dissimilar enough to be a learning challenge.
Compilers:
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranBinaries
http://www.g95.org/
http://www.fortran.com/compilers.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/fortran.shtml
IDEs:
http://www.eclipse.org/photran/
http://force.lepsch.com/ (FORTRAN 77 only)
Tutorials:
Introduction to Modern FORTRAN: http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/courses/Fortran/
FORTRAN 90 Tutorial: http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/COURSES/cs201/NOTES/fortran.html
You could also learn Visual Basic.NET, in case you ever get forced to maintain that. Evidently mono has a working Linux implementation of it:
http://www.mono-project.com/Visual_Basic
Factor is pretty radically different from everything you said you know, and also everything else listed. It's stack-based, like Forth, but has a fairly comprehensive library and a lot of interesting features.
Ada is very practical -- there's a compiler based on gcc -- but also quite different from the other imperative languages you know. I find the type system a bit stifling, but it was worth learning something about.
Lisp is a great HLL, it has everything that other languages lack. In my opinion, this is a very good language that can "satisfy" any programmers needs.
Perl is also a HLL like Lisp, it's interesting and fun at the same time. It derives from C so you can pick it up as you go. It can be hard sometimes and some people tend to get lost while learning, but it's worth knowing.
Both languages are free of use and come with Linux.
Links
Lisp:
If Lisp is so great,
An Introduction and Tutorial for Common Lisp
Perl:
PERL -- Practical Extraction and Report Language
Books
On Lisp - Great book by Paul Graham on the Lisp language. It's free and you can download it here.
Scala has been very good for making me see programming in a new light. I haven't used it for anything worklike yet, but it's still affected how I write code in other languages - not just Java, but PHP. I recently wrote a simple parser for a WordPress plugin, and the code is vastly more functional and immutable than it would have been six months ago, and better for it, despite the lack of enforcement in PHP.
The only other language to have affected the way I work so dramatically is Perl, nearly a decade earlier. Perl has contributed a lot to the way I pseudo-code, even if I never touch the language itself.
Many people compare the functional aspects of Scala to Haskell. You may even imagine that knowing Haskell means you already know all Scala could teach you, but I don't believe that. The way Scala combines OO and function has a way of making it seem like that's actually the truest form of both of them.
Like you, I have over a dozen languages under my belt. While shopping for something to play with for writing a cross-compiler, I ran across ML and family. Many very good ideas there, and they have taught me to write code is a much different way; for example, my JavaScript now has a decidedly functional bent.
After toying with OCaml under Windows a while (and getting frustrated with stability issues), I ran across F#, an offspring of OCaml. The two are quite similar (can cross-compile a lot of code), but OCaml apparently has a really good macro system (P4) and type-classes (in support of writing "strongly typed" operators against generic types), while F# has excellent support for asynchronous and parallel operations, monads, units-of-measure for numeric types, as well as cleaner OO syntax and awesome IDE integration (VS2008 & will be released in-the-box with VS2010). I much prefer F# these days, since I have access to the whole .NET runtime and loads of 3rd party libraries. In fact, I write most of my one-off and utility code in F# now; for me, its generally much more productive than C++, JavaScript, C#, PowerShell, or anything else.
F# works fairly well under Mono on Linux, and has a good following there. The compiler and runtime will be open sourced once stable (released with VS2010), and the developers consider Mono support enough of a priority for it to be seriously considered for non-Microsoft use.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I think I'm going a little crazy.
Right now, I'm working with the following languages (I was just doing a mental inventory):
C++ - our game engine
Assembler - low level debugging and a few co-processor specific routines
Lua - our game engine scripting language
HLSL - for shaders
Python - our build system and utility tools
Objective C/C++ - game engine platform code for Mac and iPhone
C# - A few tools developed in our overseas office
ExtendScript - Photoshop exporting tools
ActionScript - UI scripting
VBScript - some spreadsheet related stuff
PHP - some web related stuff
SQL - some web and tool related stuff
On top of this are the plethora of API's that often have many different ways of doing the same thing: std library, boost, .NET, wxWidgets, Cocoa, Carbon, native script libraries for Python, Lua, etc, OpenGL, Direct3d, GDI, Aqua, augh!
I find myself inadvertently conflating languages and api's, not realizing what I'm doing until I get syntax errors. I feel like I can't possibly keep up with it, and I can't possibly be proficient in all of these areas. Especially outside the realm of C++ and Python, I find myself programming more by looking at manuals that from memory.
Do you have a similar problem? Ideas for compartmentalizing so you're more efficient? Deciding where you want to stay proficient? Organizational tips? Good ways to remember when you switch from Lua to C++ you need to start using semi-colons again? Rants on how complicated we programmers have made things for ourselves?
Any ideas welcome!
A few things I do to keep them seperate...
Use different IDE's / editors / colour schemes for different languages. You start to associate the language with the environment, and when you switch windows your brain gets a big visual cue that it needs to context switch to the new language.
Try to limit context switching to 2 or 3 active languages at a time. Close down any other IDEs or editor windows when you're done with them.
Try to forget the "fire and forget" stuff. A lot of the languages you've listed seem like they wouldn't be things you're actively coding in every day, but rather tools you use to automate daily tasks. As much as possible try to have a "tool day" where you do any work you need to on those tools. Seperate it as much as possible from your day to day coding, so your brain doesn't have to worry about page swapping that stuff in and out all the time.
-- edit cue, not queue.
For any language I plan on learning thoroughly, I will write my own syntax highlighting in Vim. I try and make the colouring strict so that the colouring picks up obvious mistakes as I type them. This helps me remember where to put certain syntax items in case I forget (so // doesn't look like a comment in python, and I always have trouble remembering where to put * or [] in C). If I can't remember a function or method name, I guess it, and if it shows up in colour I know I've spelled it correctly. I also try and choose differing colours so that different languages stand out from each other, it helps my brain remember what language I'm writing in.
I think after a while it comes natural to you. When I was first getting serious about programming I was using a variety of languages - Java and C# especially. I found myself accidentally using certain Java features in C# and the other way around. Luckily for me a lot of their features are identical so it saved me there, but as I moved on this wasn't really a problem.
Try spending a significant amount of time with each language. Sit down and read a good book (or a couple) on each language and get familiar with it. Ask your boss if you can spend most of your time on one section at a time. You will begin to catch more of your mistakes before you make them. For the ones you don't, this is why debuggers were created - a programmer's best friend. I have a terrible memory, and I mean TERRIBLE. You may think it makes programming harder for me but it really doesn't. After using a language for a significant amount of time the functions just seem to come to you.
So try spending more time on each language instead of jumping around and trying to learn them all at once. The information will stick with you better and you will become a lot less flustered and confused when coding time comes around. Try doing things that help keep you focused while programming. If a lot of caffeine helps, go for it! If listening to your favorite music helps, go for it! (for me I can't concentrate whatsoever with the smallest sounds, but everyones different).
Best of luck!
The feature I never get right the first time, when I change from one language to another, is arrays. They always have different syntax, and I end up looking them up every time.
Here is a list of my most used languages and how to implement arrays in them:
//Java:
int[] array1 = new int[5];
int[] array2 = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4};
//C/C++:
int array1[5];
int array2[5] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4};
//JavaScript:
var array1 = new Array(5);
var array2 = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4];
//PHP:
$array1 = array(5);
$array2 = array(0, 1, 2, 3, 4);
//Python:
array1 = []#According to the comments, we don't care about size!
arary2 = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]; #Could use range to create a sequence
One of the things you find in web-dev is that almost by definition if you want to be capable of end-to-end work you need to be capable of at least 5 languages (SQL, mid tier, html, css, js), and every slightly different project is going to add something else (jQuery? Flash? XML?).
I think you just sort of have to grok this naturally, but two things really help:
learn concepts, not syntax and lean on IDEs and google when you need to (another reason language specific interview questions make no sense), because these are applicable to anything and it's easier to see the domain specific components sliding in and out than to think you're learning something entirely different
where possible stick to the similar families of language syntax - I know I personally find C# considerably more natural to use than PHP because it's sharing syntax with JS and Actionscript, XML because of it's familiarity for me from HTML
I agree: there are too many languages and APIs out there.
If you were a customer, and languages and APIs were just like T-shirts, you would be happy that you have the biggest choice possible. Hey, if you want a statically typed language which gives you a lot of flexibility and high performance, go with C++! If you want something easier to maintain, go with Java or Python or Ruby or you name it. You have the choice. You should be happy.
But the truth is, you're more like a guy building a house, and languages and APIs are like screws and bolts: they're your tools. If you have 1000 different types of screws and bolts, each with different characteristics and limitations, then your job will be a nightmare. You'd be more focused on your tools than on the house you're building (does this ring a bell?). Of course, I know there is no one-size-fits-all bolt, but you certainly could imagine life with just a few different types of bolts, couldn't you?
I think the problem lies in the fact that guys in the building industry love the houses they're building... and we developers just love the bolts. I'm no exception: I just love to learn a new language or framework. Bolts are so beautiful. ;-)
I personally have almost no hope of forward progress without my half-dozen API and language reference bookmarks sitting right on my desktop.
I feel your pain, bro.
I don't know, though; I think multiple-language proficiency (or at least multiple-language-general-awareness) is just sort of the world we're livin' in, and something we're just gonna have get used to. Somehow. Alas, I don't know what the secret is to keeping sane, though. (Although for me, I can say that beer definitely helps.)
Some folks on my team (I work at Real, too, incidentally) develop in C++ on Windows, for Windows, and that's it -- that's all they've been doing for years, and they're great at it, they love it, and they're totally happy doing that one thing really well.
Me, on the other hand -- I've never been able to settle into any one language, and I don't think I'd want to; generally speaking, I've learned about a language a year for the past ten years, some of them unlike any others (ColdFusion, anyone?), and these days, I do almost all of my work in Flash, Flex and ActionScript. If you'd told me two years ago what I'd be doing today, I'm sure I'd have laughed. Keeping up is exhausting sometimes (I posted similarly a while back -- a few good answers from other folks in there, too), but I can't seem to resist checking out the new stuff, keeping current, etc.
One thing I will say, though, following on from John T's and Scott's comments: books are the only way to go. Books, at least for me, along with reading lots of (good -- not bad) code, are the best way to let a language seep gradually and cohesively into your brain, and that just takes time. Like I said, I'm almost two years now with Flash, and I'm only now beginning to feel like I can speak ActionScript fluently. All told, I've probably got ten AS books on my desk, though, and there are two more downstairs waiting for me once I'm finished with the one I'm reading now.
It never ends. Woohoo!
PS: VBScript, though? Ugh, that's terrible. Sorry, man. ;)
One of the advantages of my job is that I am able to switch from one project to another, with different languages, operating systems, coding rules, QA requirements, ...
The only way I found to stay on top is not to know every bit of every language, but to know what are the reference docs and where I can find them. For instance, I use the man command for perl, TCL/TK and various flavours of Unix and Linux, the online Language Reference Manual for Ada, Apple Developer resources for Objective-C and Cocoa.
Any project scheduling you can do to minimize the context switches could be helpful. Can you put off the web development until the C++ code is stable?
Another thing I try to do is have a good "worked example" of a new language. Try and find small to medium sized samples of the language you're currently using, and keep it handy. I find picking up syntax details from a piece of sample code I'm somewhat familiar with is often quicker than digging the details out of a reference manual.
Humans can't multitask. Period.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html
If you aren't allowed to let other people do the work because they already have full plates, then get more people hired. If you aren't allowed to get more people hired, then maybe people can at least shift priorities so each person can focus a bit more.
For example: If you're full time on the engine, or at any level of commitment beyond bug fixes, why are you working on game logic? And content tools? And build tools? And web development? If you're not talking about a one year time span, with maybe a separate solid month of concentrating on each, then it sounds like you do all the programming, and everyone else just twiddles their thumbs.
Surely you're the expert for only one of these areas, and not all of them. There's that whole "if you got hit by a bus" thing. If you're that guy, then that is job security for you, but terrible for your company and your sanity.
You could try matching up tools a bit more. Move as many things as you can to Python or .Net, since I assume you can't ditch your core technologies for your games.