Tips for developing in several languages at once [closed]

Question

Does anybody have any tips for utilizing multiple languages at the same time? I use objective-c, c, perl, ruby, bash, ksh, rails, and other proprietary languages every day and am finding increasingly difficult to go back and forth between them on a daily basis. As a trivial example when switching between perl and ruby I constantly forget to use semi-colons in perl and find myself using $ for local vars in ruby. Things are even worse going from objective-c to c: I use function calls (instead meesage invocations) in objective-c. Does anybody have any tips on making working in several languages more productive?

For those of you suggesting IDEs as a solution, although I agree in principle with using an IDE to increase productivity. I tend to do all my coding in vi

Answer 1

A couple of tips:

1. Slow Down! We're used to working at a frenetic pace as developers. Switching between languages requires some more conscious thought and focus.

2. Use a good IDE - that shows your errors as you type them. This will be a gentle reminder that you are missing that semi-colon or leaving out a '$' (in many cases)

I have the same issue from time-to-time, but these two things help!