If I ever win the lottery, I'd love to learn to play the guitar, learn a few foreign languages, contribute to open source software, make a bonsai tree, read all the books I have in my apartment that are collecting dust, [a long list of other stuff I'd like to do].
I don't want a big house or an expensive car or "bling". I just wish I had the money to buy time.
You don't need to win a lottery to have the time to learn to play guitar (multiple foreign languages - yes you do). It is actually quite difficult to practice more than 15 minutes every day because of sore fingers and frustration. Lottery or no lottery - if you really want to do it you will be able to find 15 minutes in a day.
Maybe it's just me, but after 15 years of guitar, I find 15 minutes to be only enough for the barest of skill maintenance. I've definitely hit a plateau in the last few years, and I think a major factor is the relative scarcity of available time to practice, drill, and learn new stuff.
It was much easier to make progress when I was a feckless teenager.
Like many of the personalities in the internet's polyglot scene, Benny is a self-promoter who hypes his skills but lacks third-party verification that he is truly "fluent" in those languages. Furthermore, “in three months” assumes that he was banging away at picking up that particular language during that time, so even his method assumes more dedication than a lot of random HN people with stressful jobs can devote.
Through a combination of formal schooling (besides English etc. in school, I did graduate studies in linguistics that required doing coursework in nearly all the languages in a particular language family, and immersed fieldwork in some of them) and over a hundred thousand kilometers of hitchhiking where I could just practice with drivers all day every day, I have learned most of the languages of Europe to a degree where I can comfortably converse with local people when traveling or in international meetups. However, I am very aware that my skills are deficient in many respects, such as reading classic literature with its immense amount of vocabulary or idioms that native speakers will understand passively, but it doesn't come up in conversation frequently enough for most foreigners to easily pick it up. Learning a foreign language to that degree, which I would consider real fluency, takes an incredible amount of time, time usually spent totally immersed in that country.
To give an example from Romania: Benny might come over and be very conversational in 3 months. Loads of foreigners like Erasmus students manage that if they already speak Spanish or Italian and they are motivated and spend a lot of time in cafes and clubs among local people. But if I then handed Benny a simple work of literature that any local child would read in school like Marin Preda’s Morometii or a Caragiale play, he would probably have to reach for a dictionary a dozen times on just the first page.
I accept your definition of 'fluent' as valid, and your discussion as interesting.
(Benny has stated "When I learn a new language, I aim to reach a level where I speak confidently and comfortably in the language. I call this “social equivalency”. For me, that’s fluency. [..] not an academic pursuit; it’s a practical one. I aim to be able to use the language effectively in everyday conversation [..] I generally don't place much importance on my writing skills or ability to analyse and discuss printed text in a foreign language")
So it is completely fair to say he's not fluent to any near-native level - particularly after three months - but it's not entirely fair to say he has no third-party verification - from what I can tell on his rather hyped blog, he has passed CEFR C2 level Spanish, C1 level French and narrowly missed passing C2 level German exams.
It's a matter of where to draw a line, but in a comment "win the lottery and learn multiple foreign languages", I'd expect someone saying that to consider "passing advanced formal exams in French, German and Spanish" to count, rather than meaning "can read classic plays without reaching for a dictionary".
But maybe not.
It's hard enough to get people to agree on whether a good programmer can work in 'any language quickly', or whether it requires spending a good chunk of time to become familiar with idioms, warts, surrounding ecosystem and famous works and references.
TBF, as a native English speaker, you could hand me classic Shakespeare or works of poetry I actually did read in school, and there's a good chance I'd still be reaching for a dictionary on page 1.
I have learned most of the languages of Europe to a degree where I can comfortably converse with local people when traveling or in international meetups.
Even if you had a billion dollars you couldn't do all of that. You can do a few of them, but each of the above takes enough time that you cannot do them all at once.
I'm in the same boat as you. Playing guitar was all I did in school. These days my guitar hangs on the wall like an ornament. I think I play it maybe once a year. Just to busy with live and no time.
I don't want a big house or an expensive car or "bling". I just wish I had the money to buy time.