

Don’t Get Attached to Programming Languages - mcavaliere
http://mikecavaliere.com/dont-get-attached-programming-languages/

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sremani
Get attached to your programming language and learn to speak them fluently.
Please for love of God, do this one thing. Become an expert in at least one
programming language. But when evaluating other languages try as objective as
possible and seek advice from people who are really good in that language.
There is lot of nuance in polyglot argument, I can speak 3 (spoken) languages
but I still have my one native language, I am really good at.

~~~
collyw
This is what puts me off JavaScript frameworks. They change every 5 minutes.

~~~
serve_yay
Solution: just learn JavaScript :)

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mkozlows
Shorter this guy: "I don't like programming that much, so am bored by
discussions about tech topics, so maybe you should quit having them, ugh get a
life."

~~~
jjoonathan
Yeah, it's not so much what he says (although I was hoping for a powerful or
humorous anecdote rather than a statement of the obvious generalism), it's how
he says it. It comes across as unbearably smug and condescending, even if
that's not how it was intended.

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ugexe
What if I don't care about salsa dancing and would rather learn the
intricacies of a language to help myself learn more complex concepts? What
type of code would we all have to work on (to get money for salsa dancing) if
no one became attached to whatever programming language that gives way to
quality examples, books, and tools?

Use the right tool for the job and all that, but there is nothing wrong with
still being attached to something else. I've learned a lot more about
programming in general by being attached to a specific language and bringing
that experience to other languages than I ever would have by worrying about
zip lining in costa rica while writing crap code lacking concepts I hadn't had
the chance to realize yet. And to me thats perfectly fine.

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adamski2000
> don’t get caught up in arguing about this stuff for hours on end, unless
> programming itself is your life’s passion. If it is, great – code all day
> long if it makes you happy.

So basically, don't get attached to programming languages, unless you really
want to, then it's cool. But really, go get a girlfriend. Unless you want to
write code forever, which is still cool. But go bungee jumping in New
Zealand..

What a waste of 5 minutes.

~~~
gooseus
I think the main point the author was making is that you should do things you
enjoy and not waste time in ego-based arguments.

Unfortunately, he makes that point while simultaneously showing contempt and
patronizing the people who enjoy ego-based arguments to ego-based bragging
about life experiences.

~~~
alttab
All with a drip of transcendental enlightenment. I tend to agree with
everything the guy says, but it definitely came across a little douchey. Not
sure if he was targeting the HN crowd or what.

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efnx
The language you choose determines the workflow and to some degree the amount
of work required of you. If you don't want to be maintaining that project for
10 hours a day it would help to choose a language that makes introducing new
bugs difficult. "Language doesn't matter" is an idea many people who haven't
programmed in many languages have and it's detrimental to the engineers around
them.

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zwieback
For me C has been a constant companion for almost 30 years now, C++ for 25 so
I have some attachment to those languages.

Everything else seems to come and go, especially scripting languages. Right
now I like Python but I'm not holding my breath.

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baldfat
I have a soft spot for Pascal since it was my "first" real language that
wasn't basic or hacking Assembly on C-64. I feel like it is okay.

If someone wants to say don't be attached because you will be biased. I say we
all have bias. Just DONT use you bias to blast other languages.

I can't tell you how many times Python people jump on a comment whenever I
mention I prefer R to Python for statistics to tell me how wrong I am and how
bad R is.

Live and let live and have a warm place for specific languages and dread for
others (I am trying to get over my bias against javascript).

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actsasbuffoon
> But don’t get caught up in arguing about this stuff for hours on end, unless
> programming itself is your life’s passion.

It is indeed. Does that mean that I'm free to argue about this stuff for hours
on end?

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eblume
One of my favorite questions to ask candidates goes like this:

"What's your favorite programming language?"

"Describe three things you would change about that language."

And as a bonus question if they aren't faltering, for each improvement they
list, I'll ask: "Can you think of a programming language that does that thing
correctly?"

I find that programmers I respect/admire can _all_ answer these questions
enthusiastically and without hesitation. As with all interview questions
though, you do need to worry about false positives and negatives.

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gepoch
I think it's pretty hard to NOT get attached to programming languages.

I know personally that as I specialize in a language or a framework, I get
better and better at seeing problems in terms of that language or frameworks
idioms and happy paths.

I love learning new languages. Each new language usually adds a couple of new
ways of thinking about things, and buries some of my older tools deeper in my
toolbox.

I guess I'm just saying there's more to it than aesthetics or attachment. I
think there's a practical mind-inertia.

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no_wave
This is a disgusting sentiment. Doing things well can carry an intrinsic
reward, and cultivating that is one of the most important things in a
rewarding life.

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collyw
Going from a Perl job to a VB 6 job a few years ago, it was very unsatisfying.
The location was way better though.

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michaelochurch
This is silly. "PL is hard, let's go shopping." Except, here, it's "ziplining"
instead of "shopping".

My ability to do my job depends on the programming languages used. Many things
that I can do in Haskell or Clojure would take far too long to do in Java. And
as I get older and leadership is expected of me, I need to know what's out
there and what the most capable tools are (and what tools are exciting to the
best programmers). I'm not so attached to any language that I believe in "one
language to rule them all", because there obviously isn't such a thing, but PL
is a choice of very high impact.

I would say, "don't get _so_ attached to programming languages that you use
the wrong tool or reject new ideas too early".

For example, Haskell is optimized for highly productive individuals who don't
mind learning new concepts. It empowers the individual. Java (at least, with
the modern enterprise culture) is optimized for teams of hundreds of mediocre
programmers who are individually replaceable and insignificant. Career
management requires picking work environments, and tool choices carry a lot of
signal (if not perfect) about how a company views and manages technology.

The OP smells like that attitude of "I don't know it, so let's call it
unimportant and talk about roller coasters in Spain."

~~~
matdrewin
Riiiight.

"Haskell is optimized for highly productive individuals"

"Java is optimized for teams of hundreds of mediocre programmers who are
individually replaceable and insignificant"

