> They may be able to hack around, write a for loop, track down a bug....but you're not going to get the same caliber of work from someone who first saw python

> They may be able to hack around, write a for loop, track down a bug....but you're not going to get the same caliber of work from someone who first saw python two weeks ago compared to someone whose been using the language for 5 years on real projects. From the opposite side of things, someone who's only been using the same tools for 5 years is probably going to struggle picking up new tools. For the projects I work on, it's rare to use the same languages and tools for every project. I'd rather have someone that understands how to write good code in general and knows multiple programming paradigms instead of someone claiming to be a guru in a single language. If someone knows Java and JavaScript well for example, is it really going to take them more than a few weeks to be productive in Python (especially if you have someone on the team helping with picking the appropriate libraries to use)?