Why learn Perl, Python, Ruby if the company is using C++, C# or Java as the application language?

**Edit:** I wrote this before reading the update to the original question. See my other answer for a better answer to the updated question. I will leave this as is as a warning against being the fastest gun in the west =)

Over a decade ago, when I was learning the ways of the Computer, the Old Wise Men With Beards explained how C and C++ are the tools of the industry. No one used Pascal and only the foolhardy would risk their companies with assembler.

And of course, **no one would even mention the awful slow ugly thing called Java**. It will not be a tool for serious business.

So. Um. Replace the languages in the above story and perhaps you can predict the future. Perhaps you can't. Point is, Java will not be the Last Programming Language ever and also you will most likely switch employers as well. The future is charging at you 24 hours per day. Be prepared.

Learning new languages is good for you. Also, in some cases it can give you bragging rights for a long time. My first university course was in Scheme. So when people talk to me about the new *language du jour*, my response is something like "First-class functions? That's so last century."

And of course, you get **more stuff done** with a high-level language.

Learning something with a flexible OOP system, like Lisp or Perl (see Moose), will allow you to better expand and understand your thoughts on software engineering. Ideally, every language has some unique facet (whether it be CLOS or some other technique) that enhances, extends and grows your abilities as a programmer.

You should also consider learning a functional programming language like Scala. It has many of the advantages of Ruby, including a concise syntax, and powerful features like closures. But it compiles to Java class files and and integrate seamlessly into a Java stack, which may make it much easier for your employer to swallow.

Scala isn't dynamically typed, but its "implicit conversion" feature gives many, perhaps even all of the benefits of dynamic typing, while retaining many of the advantages of static typing.

One big reason to learn Perl or Ruby is to help you automate any complicated tasks that you have to do over and over.

Or if you have to analyse contents of log files and you need more mungeing than available using grep, sed, etc.

Also using other languages, e.g. Ruby, that don't have much "setup cost" will let you quickly prototype ideas before implementing them in C++, Java, etc.

HTH

cheers,

Rob

Personally I work on a Java app, but I couldn't get by without perl for some supporting scripts.

I've got scripts to quickly flip what db I'm pointing at, scripts to run build scripts, scripts to scrape data & compare stuff.

Sure I *could* do all that with java, or maybe shell scripts (I've got some of those too), but who wants to compile a class (making sure the classpath is set right etc) when you just need something quick and dirty. Knowing a scripting language can remove 90% of those boring/repetitive manual tasks.

They're useful for the "Quick Hack" that is for plugging a gap in your main language for a quick (and potentially dirty) fix faster than it would take to develop the same in your main language. An example: a simple script in perl to go through a large text file and replace all instances of an email address with another is trivial with an amount of time taken in the 10 minute range. Hacking a console app together to do the same in your main language would take multiples of that.

You also have the benefit that exposing yourself to additional languages broadens your abilities and learning to attack problems from a different languages perspective can be as valuable as the language itself.

Finally, scripting languages are very useful in the realm of extension. Take LUA as an example. You can bolt a lua interpreter into your app with very little overhead and you now have a way to create rich scripting functionality that can be exposed to end users or altered and distributed quickly without requiring a rebuild of the entire app. This is used to great effect in many games most notably World of Warcraft.

It's all about broadening your horizons as a developer. If you limit yourself to only strong-typed languages, you may not end up the best programmer you could.

As for tasks, Python/Lua/Ruby/Perl are great for small simple tasks, like finding some files and renaming them. They also work great when paired with a framework (e.g. Rails, Django, Lua for Windows) for developing simple apps quickly. Hell, 37Signals is based on creating simple yet very useful apps in Ruby on Rails.

I primarily program in Java and C# but use dynamic languages (ruby/perl) to support smoother deployment, kicking off OS tasks, automated reporting, some log parsing, etc.

After a short time learning and experimenting with ruby or perl you should be able to write some regex manipulating scripts that can alter data formats or grab information from logs. An example of a small ruby/perl script that could be written quickly would be a script to parse a very large log file and report out only a few events of interest in either a human readable format or a csv format.

Also, having experience with a variety of different programming languages should help you think of new ways to tackle problems in more structured languages like Java, C++, and C#.

Im not sure if this is what you are looking for, but we write our main application with Java at the small company I work for, but have used python to write smaller scripts quickly. Backup software, temporary scripts to manipulate data and push out results. It just seems easier sometimes to sit down with python and write a quick script than mess with classes and stuff in java.

Temp scripts that aren't going to stick around don't need a lot of design time wasted on them.

And I am lazy, but it is good to just learn as much as you can of course and see what features exist in other languages. Knowing more never hurts you in future career changes :)

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Learning new languages is about keeping an open mind and learning new ways of doing things.