Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Switch Programming Languages?

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: I always see a lot of different opinions about programming languages, but how much choice do you really get to have over which language to use? If you want to develop for Android, then you're probably using Java...and if you're developing for iOS, then you've probably been using Swift or Objective-C. Even when looking for a job, all your most recent job experience is usually tied up in whatever language your current employer insisted on using. (Unless people are routinely getting hired to work on projects in an entirely different language than the one that they're using now...)

Maybe the question I really want to ask is how often do you really get to choose your programming languages... Does it happen when you're swayed by the available development environment or intrigued by the community's stellar reputation, or that buzz of excitement that keeps building up around one particular language? Or are programming languages just something that you eventually just fall into by default?
Leave your answers in the comments. How often do you switch programming languages?

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Switch?

[drolli]

I dont switch. I start to use programming languages when is see it fit and stop to use them when I see it fit. It is not a 'Everything in one language' thing. Depending on the project, languages switch positions.

1987-1990: Basic
1988-today: Assembler
1989-1993: Pascal
1990-today: C/C++
1995-2010: perl
1996-today: octave/matlab
1999-2005: Autolisp
2000-today: Java
2002-today: Python
1995-today: bash
2007-2011: tcl/tk

Re:So far, I don't

[TheRaven64]

C++ has recently replaced a lot of scripting language usage for me. C++14 has most of what I want from a scripting language:

• First-class closures (and the 'auto' type on parameters in lambdas in C++14 is really useful).
• Mostly automatic memory management (shared_ptr / unique_ptr).
• Regular expressions.
• Fast I/O
• A rich set of efficient built-in data structures (associative arrays, lists, vectors, sets)
• Reasonable performance
• Multithreading
• The ability to package my scripts into a library for embedding in other applications later

For small programs, compiling C++ at -O0 takes under a second and the result runs faster than any interpreted language.