alt Hacker Newsprobably if you don't program already, unlikely if you do, they are more similar than different once you know the three classes (imperative, functional, logical)
I suspect an amount of the same in human language, where learning french if you know spanish is less lift than learning a tonal language like mandarin
similar results from (eg.) learning music can be found, the underlying pattern seems to be learning things that are very very new to you, and challenge the brain, benefits the brain
>probably if you don't program already, unlikely if you do, they are more similar than different once you know the three classes (imperative, functional, logical)
I mean if it were that similarity made it not useful then it would surely be that you should only learn languages that are significantly different from ones you already know, but that does not seem to be the case from the admittedly not very detailed article.
>I suspect an amount of the same in human language, where learning french if you know spanish is less lift than learning a tonal language like mandarin
right, but they don't say that.
Maybe it is learning things different to you. But perhaps it is stimulating the parts of the brain that do the most relating of complicated concepts to each other. In which case it is just learning a bunch of words and what they refer to and how to structure these words together to discourse on ideas.
One common thing that is used to keep people from losing abilities in Alzheimer's diagnosis is using complicated skills like knitting, drawing. That is to say practicing complicated skills you already have prevents deterioration, so it seems reasonable to assume learning complicated skills does the same.
In which case it ends up being not very amazing information, as that is what I would naturally assume to be the case.
Use it or lose it.