How many (programming) languages does a coder really know?

I can share a valuable lesson I have learned from one of my ex-managers in my first year of professional world. He has been working in the same company for like 20+ years and as a manager for 15 years almost. At some point we were evaluating some framework(product) and I was asked to compare some of the algorithms they had to what we have. I was a little hesitant earlier because I had never really written anything inC++after my school.

After wasting couple of days with that, I walked to my boss and told him that may be I can't do it because this language is out of my scope. He gave his usual traditional smile and told me,

"Once you're an Engineer, you're an engineer. And if you're an engineer you should be able to write in whatever language is required for the specific task. It takes some time to understand the syntax and specifications but logic should not change. I am sure you can do. Just do it"

I don't know if you interpreted it correctly the way I did but that has changed the way I see and the way I work. Even though he manage a huge chunk of products and multiple teams he still writes code. He fixes issues in backend, front end, computation and what not. I have never complained again. I did Java, R and I am doing Python now. It's what is required for my team and what's best for our product. I am basically an Engineer who writes code no matter what language. So my advise is learn any language of your interest and be more analytical in what you do.

Written 24 Apr. 

Raviteja Chirala,Staying Hungry, Being Foolish.

http://www.quora.com/How-many-programming-languages-does-a-coder-really-know/answer/Raviteja-Chirala?srid=J7ru&share=1