I was bothered by your question, mostly because of the word fluently. I was hoping you would define that word in your comment. You did:
"How many programming languages are you able to use effortlessly to produce nontrivial programs?
I see this as a different question entirely, as I'd question whether a non-trivial program can be done without effort. Making I'm taking this too literally, but then what are you really wanting to measure?
So, what are you really asking? How many languages could we sit down and program with, and spend time programming rather than Googling? Or is it really "How many programming languages are you able to use effortlessly to produce nontrivial programs?"
Personally, I like to think of it as how many languages am I comfortable using to employ it in a production environment and support it for money. This means I know more than just the language, but the ecosystem and environment as well. After all, learning objective-c is easy. Learning all the cocoa frameworks? That will take much longer. Learning all the frameworks without needing to reference the documentation? Hah.
You can say that you are fluent in i.e. english even if it takes you some effort to formulate some arguments.
I'd say you are fluent in a programming language if you can effortlessly write a program even if it took some effort to solve the problems per se.
"How many programming languages are you able to use effortlessly to produce nontrivial programs?
I see this as a different question entirely, as I'd question whether a non-trivial program can be done without effort. Making I'm taking this too literally, but then what are you really wanting to measure?
So, what are you really asking? How many languages could we sit down and program with, and spend time programming rather than Googling? Or is it really "How many programming languages are you able to use effortlessly to produce nontrivial programs?"
Personally, I like to think of it as how many languages am I comfortable using to employ it in a production environment and support it for money. This means I know more than just the language, but the ecosystem and environment as well. After all, learning objective-c is easy. Learning all the cocoa frameworks? That will take much longer. Learning all the frameworks without needing to reference the documentation? Hah.