Managing multiple projects at work and also at home requires me to work with various programming languages. The adage “the right tool for the right job” is definitely true for application development. I currently develop using “C”, Java, PHP and Python. I’ve only recently started to learn Python because it’s currently the only language supported with the Google App Engine.

Knowing multilpe programming languages is not really a big deal with one exception. There are times when I have to jump between projects in a short time period. Jumping quickly back and forth between different projects and languages can be difficult. For instance, I was doing “C” development yesterday during the work day, Python development at home last night and now I’m making modifications to a Java application at work today. In a situation like this it’s not surprising to get compile errors due to using syntax/keyword/function from a different language.

Oh, did I mention I was also doing some Linux shell scripting yesterday too?

Luckily these situations where I have to jump quickly between languages doesn’t happen all that often. Usually I can work on just one or two projects for longer periods of time where the switching isn’t quite to chaotic.