I was thinking about something I heard a few different times.  "If you know a programming language or two you can pick up just about any language pretty quickly."  The implication was that you didn't have to go and learn very many languages to be a valuable programmer.

I don't know.  I learned to program in BASIC on a Commodore 64.  BASIC on a 80's era toy computer is pretty lame compared to the languages in use today.  I mean, the lamest thing was lack of a real editor.  You had to assign line numbers to each line in the program--by hand.  I know!

whatever.  I've learned a number of languages. Maybe I can pick up a programming language quicker because I've learned so many. What I know about Fortran and Python I learned from troubleshooting existing code.  I'm sure my knowledge of C helped me in both cases, but some languages are not easy to learn for a programmer with experience in only one or two languages.  A few examples:
1.  C is just hard.  You can pick up the basics easily, but it seems to have a greater ability to produce confusion than any other language I've seen.
2.  Object oriented programming (done correctly) requires a change in thinking for people like me who are used to procedural languages.
3.  Knowing a procedural language will probably set you back if you are trying to program a PCL with ladder logic.
4.  Database programming is really weird for someone like me.

I don't know, but hearing statements that imply, "all programming languages are the same," tends to make me think the speaker has not done enough programming to be really useful.  He or she may also be unaware of the reasons for choosing one over the other.

whatever.