Learn New "Languages"

In the last four years, I mainly used Java as a main programming language to do my work. And I just realized that it's been a while since the last time I learned new programming language. So if I have enough time I'd like to learn these languages:

1. Perl

It's not a new language afterall, however I cannot code in Perl! Shame on me! Realizing the text processing power (regular expression/ text mining) of Perl, I definitely need to learn this language. Actually when we did some work in IR lab for TREC competition, part of our work rely on Perl. Usually when it comes to Perl thingy I just handed over to Clara (the master of Perl!) . As Clara said, Perl is a must for an IR guy :D

2. Python

Hmm, not sure about the power of this language, however, I used Python a bit when I participated in Google Summer of Code 2009 (although failed in the 2nd phase of the program :(( ). In addition to that, there is an NLP tool built on top of Python, called OpenNLTK.

3. PHP

I'm bad at web programming, really bad. I only did it in 2004 , if I remember correctly, for a web programming course assignment.

4. Objective-C

Simple reason, my sister bought me a MacbookPro ! It would be interesting to learn developing applications for iOS.

Well, the list shouldn't stop here. Actually still many things I want to learn but I don't think I can spend sufficient time to do that. The highest priority is for Perl. I think 1-week is enough.