On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 16:20:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 11:43:35 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 11:13:04 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 10:29:05 UTC, Ola Fosheim
Grøstad wrote:
On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 09:56:48 UTC, Pjotr Prins
wrote:
[...]
Good programmers aren't stuck on any single language and
will pick the tool best suited for the job at hand. Good
programmers are also good at picking up new languages.
And who do you know who does this? While I myself have
espoused the idea of the best tool for the job in this forum,
realistically, other than a small handful of coders, when
does that ever happen?
[...]
Everyone at my employer, a few thousand of them doing
enterprise consulting.
We specialize in a few large domains, and tend to jump between
them every 6 months or a year, when switching projects.
On my case, full stack development across JVM and .NET
languages, with C++ for low level coding.
How many of those few thousand are actually comfortable with
C++ for low-level coding? I think you've said before that it's
not many. So okay, your colleagues switch between Java and C#,
which is somewhat uncommon as many places are pure C# or Java
shops, but those are the two most popular enterprise
application languages, noted for their similarities.
You can hardly use this as an example of having a toolbox of
languages and picking the best for the job, say Erlang for some
high-concurrency microservice or ruby for an app you need to
get up and running quickly. You're just using two of the most
popular business languages and deciding which based on what the
customer wants.
Not all of them of them are comfortable with C++, that is true.
But they are comfortable with other languages, which I am not.
Notice that "JVM and .NET languages, with C++ for low level
coding." was my own skillset, not everyone at the company.
Also I said JVM and .NET languages, not Java and C#. If you want
me to be more precise, Java, Clojure, C#, F#, VB.NET and now
getting into Kotlin due to future Android projects.
I also do JavaScript, PL/SQL, pgSQL on occasion, and have helped
some iOS projects when an extra helping hand is needed and I am
low on project requests.
I never like to specialize in any technology stack, it is the
best way to outdate myself on a market that is fashion driven.
Of course there are lots of details I don't master in every
programming language, but as Wirth puts it, it is all about
mastering CS concepts, algorithms and data structures. Also why
Knuth used his own invented Assembly instead of choosing any
programming language.
To actually know every detail of programming language, or what
its runtime library is capable of, there are books and web sites
to get it from.
Soft skills and domain knowledge in each market are more relevant
than knowing every single detail of a programming language.
