Well, I don't think that analogy is entirely on-point
Point taken. New analogy.
"It's a bit like wanting to be a carpenter, and asking, should I learn sawing, or sanding?"
Most developers will go through many programming languages in their lifetime. ALL formal Computer Science/Computer Engineering, etc. programs will expose students to MANY computer languages, so that students will get exposure to different styles of programming languages, and learn how to select the appropriate one for a particular task. MOST developers today do NOT work in a single programming language.
In rough order, the languages I've used:
- 1620 machine language (punched on cards in decimal digits)
- Fortran II
- Mix (made-up assembler language)
- PL/1
- Cobol, Algol, APL, Snobol, Lisp ("survey of programming languages" course)
- IBM/360 assembler
- Spitbol
- 8008, 4040, 8080, Z80, 6800, 6502, TMS-1000,808x assembler
- PL/m (Motorola PL/1-like language for 68xx)
- Trac
- Forth
- c
- Fortran IV
- c++
- sh/csh/ksh, etc.
- Pascal
- Java
- javascript
- CSS and HTML, which I consider declarative languages
- SQL, in various incarnations
- Perl
- Tcl
- Ruby
- objective-C
- MATLAB
I've authored one programming language and written a compiler for it. It's obscure. VSA, or "Variation Simulation Language'. It's not the same as the VSA used for chip design. It's used to describe and manipulate 3D geometries in the simulation of manufacturing variances in (usually) mechanical assemblies. It's usually hidden behind lots of layers of GUI.
I'm sure others here have similarly-long lists of programming languages they have learned and used. It is the LEAST aspect of the job of developing software!