Right so, this one is a bit strange. Many years ago, I was on a lunch break at a coffee shop—you know, when we still had to go to the office, at least five days a week—reading Odersky's #Scala 1.0 book, which had just come out. A few pages and a few sips later, an older man stood up from a corner, marched straight to me, and barked with an equal mixture of annoyance and disdain, "Why do you kids keep chasing new #programming languages? COBOL is good enough for everyone."

Mind you, I was no longer a "kid", but an early middle-aged bloke with a kid of my own. But given his attitude and his linguistic propensity, I gave him a pass, chalking him up as a recent pensioner.

I smiled (that is what we Asians do, when we speak), and replied, "Every language is designed for a particular purpose, so the more varieties one knows, the more agile one's thought processes would be. Besides, it is fun to discover new concepts."

Without saying a word more, he shook his head in disgust, turned away, tossed his coffee cup in the bin, and strode off the shop.

This was an unusual, but brief, encounter. It was insignificant, in the scheme of things. Yet, it has dug in and stayed in my mind, through these years. I am quite certain there is a lesson in there, somewhere, somehow.