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“Learn at least one new language every year” is bad advice
- tboyd47 9y ago> Over the years, people have stripped that context away and turned it into something like this: "Learn at least one new language every year or you're not a good programmer." It's generally bad advice to set up unreasonable expectations for yourself. For some people, learning one or two languages (on an extremely shallow level) in a year could expand their mind and make them more well-rounded. For others, it might just be an invitation to a pointless busywork competition with your peers. You learned two languages last year!? Well, I'm going to learn three. In programming, we have no certifications and no licensing. If you can write a program that does something useful to somebody, then congratulations, you are a Licensed and Certified Developer, I guess. There's no definition between the in-group of "true" programmers and all the other hacks who just got lucky. A weird side effect of this is that these divisions emerge naturally through developers' individual journeys of professional growth. "You don't become a true programmer until you do X." And so on.