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I agree, absolutely. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that "dabbling in languages is counterproductive". That's like concluding that martinis are fundamentall

I agree, absolutely. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that "dabbling in languages is counterproductive". That's like concluding that martinis are fundamentally wrong because some people are alcoholics. I'd also suggest that of the two pathological conditions -- Overdabbling and Underdabbling -- the Underdabblers outnumber the Overdabblers by a huge margin. We just see a lot more of the latter on the Internet, because for many obsessive dabblers the whole point is to brag about it. You need to find a balance. In the end, I think this essay is much more about that balance than its title suggests.

tptacek 19y ago
I agree, let's not jump to conclusions. I'd like to see you defend your argument, that "underdabblers outnumber the overdabblers". Control for talent, please. Clearly there are thousands of VB forms developers out there; let's stick with the people working on interesting problems.
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Well, if I'm not allowed to casually wave my hand and invoke my legendary army of VB forms developers, my "argument" will evaporate, as you no doubt suspected. :) Because, alas, I can't name any talented folks, working on interesting problems, who are obvious under-dabblers. This may be because I have led a sheltered life: Too many of the programmers I know are from MIT, where until recently they inoculated everyone against underdabbling by making them take an entire course on Scheme. I tend to work on open-source stuff that's hosted on Linux, another community where underdabbling is rare and overdabbling is the danger. I read news.yc, which incorporates plenty of dabbling -- much more than I have time for, really, and perhaps more than you have patience for. ;) Finally, I myself am only a programmer because I kept dabbling in software while I was supposed to be working on physics. If I had the personality that found it easy to focus strictly on one thing, I'd be a semiconductor process engineer right now. Of course, the statements that the original article took such exception to -- the ones like "you should learn a programming language every year" -- are largely intended for the less-talented people that have just been defined out of the discussion. And, again, that's kind of where the original author ends up: "Once you learn one language... oops, make it two languages... no, five! Once you learn five languages, you should definitely stop dabbling!"

tptacek 19y ago

I agree, let's not jump to conclusions. I'd like to see you defend your argument, that "underdabblers outnumber the overdabblers". Control for talent, please. Clearly there are thousands of VB forms developers out there; let's stick with the people working on interesting problems.

mechanical_fish 19y ago
Well, if I'm not allowed to casually wave my hand and invoke my legendary army of VB forms developers, my "argument" will evaporate, as you no doubt suspected. :) Because, alas, I can't name any talented folks, working on interesting problems, who are obvious under-dabblers. This may be because I have led a sheltered life: Too many of the programmers I know are from MIT, where until recently they inoculated everyone against underdabbling by making them take an entire course on Scheme. I tend to work on open-source stuff that's hosted on Linux, another community where underdabbling is rare and overdabbling is the danger. I read news.yc, which incorporates plenty of dabbling -- much more than I have time for, really, and perhaps more than you have patience for. ;) Finally, I myself am only a programmer because I kept dabbling in software while I was supposed to be working on physics. If I had the personality that found it easy to focus strictly on one thing, I'd be a semiconductor process engineer right now. Of course, the statements that the original article took such exception to -- the ones like "you should learn a programming language every year" -- are largely intended for the less-talented people that have just been defined out of the discussion. And, again, that's kind of where the original author ends up: "Once you learn one language... oops, make it two languages... no, five! Once you learn five languages, you should definitely stop dabbling!"