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.
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."
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.
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.
> 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..
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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."
