Ask HN: How much should language preference influence career moves?

[izolate]

Hey HN,

I've been wondering about career paths, especially when it involves moving into new areas like AI/ML. How much should your preference for certain programming languages influence your career decisions?

For context, I find myself particularly inclined towards strongly typed languages - I've had a great experience with Go, for instance. This preference has become a significant part of my professional identity and comfort in coding.

That being said, I see a lot of growth and learning potential in fields like AI/ML, which often favor more dynamically typed languages. Let's say an opportunity to work in this new field arises, but the job requires using languages like Python.

Should the potential for learning and growth in a new domain outweigh the comfort of using a preferred language? Or is it valid to prioritize language preference, given how central it is to one's day-to-day work?

Curious to hear how others might approach this, especially if you've had to make similar choices in your career.

Thanks for any insights!

[thebuilderjr]

You've touched upon an important aspect of career growth that resonates with many people here, including myself. I went through a similar situation, where I had to decide between continuing with Java, which I knew like the back of my hand, and diving into Python for an exciting data science role.

Here's what I've learned from that experience: Languages are just tools in our ever-expanding toolkit. It's the fundamental concepts and problem-solving skills that truly define us as developers and engineers. Go is a fantastic language with a lot of merits, but don't let your comfort with it limit your career trajectory. AI/ML is a burgeoning field, and the demand for skilled professionals there is only going to grow.

Think of it this way: mastering a new language like Python opens up a whole new world of opportunities. It enables you to not only contribute to AI/ML projects but also brings a new perspective to the strongly typed languages you love. Imagine bringing the agility of Python to the performance and reliability of Go in your future projects! Moreover, Python isn’t just for AI/ML; it’s also a gateway to backend development, automation, web development, and so much more.

The learning curve might seem steep at first, but given your experience with a strongly typed language, you'll bring a unique set of skills to Python programming. Good practices like type hinting in Python can benefit greatly from your background.

In making your decision, consider the long-term benefits of versatility against the comfort of familiarity. Embrace learning as a continuous journey and weigh the growth potential in AI/ML against your current trajectory. After all, languages will evolve and change, but the problems we solve and the impact we make will outlast any single technology.

[Jemaclus]

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, languages are just tools. On the other hand, I have favorite tools!

I've worked enough jobs to know that I'd rather be happy with the tools in my toolkit, and I've also been around long enough to know that there are jobs out there that use the tools that I like! Why compromise if I don't have to?

So personally? I hold out for jobs that are in the languages I like, and I don't apply to jobs that are in languages I don't like.

That said, it never hurts to learn something new!

[drakonka]

A company once reached out asking to talk after a few of ex-colleagues recommended me. I was not actively looking to change jobs at the time, but after catching up with them they basically asked me what kind of role I might be interested in making a move for. At the time I'd been writing Go for fun and liked the language, but hadn't worked with it professionally. It was the first thing that came to mind, so I asked them if they did anything with Go. Turns out most of their backend stack was written in Go. That sounded fun/interesting, so I ended up interviewing for a backend dev position.

In retrospect, curiosity and learning have been the things that drive most of my career moves. In this particular instance I was curious about working with Go and followed that. Most of the time it is the project and types of problems involved that pique my curiosity as opposed to language, though.

[giantg2]

Pick a popular one for the field you want to be in. If there are multiple, choose the one you like the most. Most companies interview people based on the language the company uses. If you show up for a code screen in Java because that's what the company uses and you only have experience in COBOL, you'll have a tough time.

[austin-cheney]

A LOT. Language choice determines your peer reference group of your career. If you want to live office space the movie be a Java developer. If you want to work with young and insecure people that cannot program be a JavaScript developer. If you want to write software with real stress be a C++ developer.

[imhoguy → austin-cheney]

Oh man, I want to hear something about Ruby and Rust guys please XD