Question

Using the right language for the job is the key – this is the comment I read in SO and I also belive thats the right thing to do. Because of this we ended up using different languages for different parts of the project – like perl, VBA(Excel Macros), C# etc. We have three to four languages currently in use inside the project. Using the right language for the job has made it immensly more easy to do automate a job, but of late people are complaining that any new person who has to take over the project will have to learn so many different languages to get started. Also it is difficult to find such kind of person. Please note that this is a one to two person working on the project maximum at a given point of time. I would like to know if the method we are following is right or should we converge to single language and try to use it across all the job even though another language might be better suited for it. Your experenece related to this would also help.

Languages used and their purpose:

1. Perl – Processing large text file(log files)
2. C# with Silverlight for web based reporting.
3. LabVIEW for automation
4. Excel macros for processing data in excel sheets, generating graphs and exporting to powerpoint.

Answer 1

I’d say you are doing it right. Almost all the projects I’ve ever worked on have used multiple languages, without any problems. I think you may be overestimating the difficulty people have picking up new languages, particularly if they all use the same paradigm. If your project were using Haskell, Smalltalk, C++ and assembler, you might have difficulties, I must admit 🙂