Multilanguage Programming
Steve Vinoski · IEEE Internet Computing · 2008
Knowing and using multiple programming languages for normal day-to-day development can yield significant benefits. No single language is a great fit for all problems. A programming language usually owes its existence to one simple fact: its designer felt it could address a set of problems - perhaps even just one problem - better than other available languages. This belief is apparently not uncommon: thousands of languages have come and gone and thousands more will follow. Numerous trade-offs are involved in programming language design and development, so there's room for many different approaches and variants. Unsurprisingly, monolingual developers tend to choose general-purpose rather than specialized programming languages. General-purpose languages perform adequately for a wide variety of problems, but they generally yield predominantly middle-of-the-road solutions - neither great nor terrible. Of course, some monolingual developers possess extremely deep and thorough knowledge of their programming languages, and so know how to exploit them to the fullest.