Be a Better Developer by Coding in Four Different Types of Lauguages

I like programming languages and find out that every time I learn a new language it improves my coding in the other ones as well. I learn new ways of doing things, different ways of thinking and it's great.

I usually tell new developers they need to write a (small) project in at least four types of languages - mainstream (procedural/OO), functional, logic based and assembly. Each of these types will give you a different way of solving problems and enrich your programming experience by and order of magnitude.

Here are my recommendations for each category.

Main Stream

By "main stream" I mean procedural/OO languages. There are tons of these and its up to what you're working with currently (though it might be a good excuse to learn a new language). I'm a Python expert, but pick anything - Go, JavaScript, Ruby, C, C++, Java, C# ...

(Yeah - I know they differ a lot. But thinking in most of them is probably the same. The main difference will probably be dynamic vs static typing).

Functional

Many choices here as well. Personally I like the Lisp family of languages, mostly Clojure and Scheme but you can check out a Common Lisp implementation (I think SBCL leads the pack currently), Haskell, ML and others.

Logic Based

If you haven't done logic programming - it'll blow your mind! It's a totally different way of thinking. Prolog is the main language, one free implementation is SWI but there are others as well.

Assembly

Learning assembly will give you a better understanding on how computers work and what are the abstractions other programming languages do for you. I recommend picking one that targets the machine you're working on.