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Don't worry about it. I was in a similar position a few months ago when I, a python programmer, was offered a perl position. Eventually you just get used to it,

Don't worry about it. I was in a similar position a few months ago when I, a python programmer, was offered a perl position. Eventually you just get used to it, and you might even find things you like. I've stopped being as much of a language snob. Some features and most syntax are just decorative, and you'll adjust. The whole giant namespace thing would bother me a lot, but hey its worked for other people before.

j_baker 16y ago
Just because you don't want to work with a language (especially PHP, dunno about Perl) doesn't make you a language snob. If you're closed off to any languages other than your preferred language, you're a language snob. That said, there's nothing wrong with programmers being picky about languages. Not only are languages what we're forced to think in day in and day out, but they affect what tools we can use, how we structure our code, and (like it or not) what jobs we can easily get.
- corin_ 16y ago
  Snobbery is defined as looking down on anything you consider inferior - for example in social classes, you can have middle class snobs without them thinking that every other class (including the upper class) are worse than them. So no, I'd disagree with your definition of 'snob'.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    Dictionary.com seems to see my point of view as being valid: "a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field: a musical snob." Regardless, if avoiding languages I consider inferior make me a snob then I'm happy to proclaim myself a snob.
- ryan-allen 16y ago
  That is good advice, but what will PHP teach someone exactly? I don't believe it has anything interesting to offer someone who has learnt a number of languages. All it has going for it is that it has low barrier to entry and is a commodity in terms of it's developer and low-end hosting. I consider these as good selling points for PHP but that is all I think it has going for it. I think the social ecosystem of a language is very important, and I think there's more information and quality libraries in Ruby at the moment, so the popularity vote for PHP is a bit moot nowadays for web application development. I try not to be a snob, I try to use 'the best tool for the job' but I don't think PHP is a very good tool. And I'm sorry but as someone who uses these tools all day I do not consider it a good tool.
  - Ixiaus 16y ago
    I agree with this strongly. I was a PHP programmer for quite some time, a good one at that. I started itching to move away from PHP beacause I knew of its weaknesses and the expressive beauty of python. Long story short, I am now a web application programmer that solely uses python. The argument that language choice doesn't matter, it's the engineer that matters, is very valid. I'm an excellent engineer in both and produce high quality working code in both. But python is clearer, more fun, and right.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    "I try not to be a snob, I try to use 'the best tool for the job' but I don't think PHP is a very good tool." That was my point actually. :-) Just because you don't want to use PHP doesn't make you a snob.
jacquesm 16y ago
Language snobs, as a rule, are people that have not programmed in more than one language, or that somehow think that their chosen superior tool makes them superior as well. Nice to see that learning a 'crappy' language like PHP got you on to a more even keel in that respect.
- jules 16y ago
  On the contrary. Language snobs have programmed in multiple languages. That's why they can clearly recognize a flaw when they see it. If you've always used a tool with the same flaw you likely don't recognize it as a flaw and just think that that's the way it works. Or you do kinda recognize it as a flaw but don't realize how much it slows you down.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    I've used quite a few languages and even though I see the flaws I just shrug and get on with the job at hand, re-writing something because a code base is not written in 'your' language is the mark of a pretty inflexible programmer. A language snob is someone who derives a feeling of superiority from the language they use, in reality the tools matter a lot less than language snobs will have you believe. I've worked with lots of people over the years, and some of them were all-out snobs about 'their' chosen language. These people were extremely irritating to work with because they refused to look past the minimal advantage that you derive from working in language a,b or c. The stuff most of us create could be implemented in just about any language without anything close to the kind of 'slowing down' that you allude to, it all boils down to how well you know your language and the environment you operate in, as well as knowledge about the domain you are building your work for. In my experience the choice of language has a relatively small impact on the speed of the initial build and the quality of that build. Over a longer term for less than rocket science style projects it is far more important to have good documentation and a supply of reasonably competent coders than that it is important to do your project in any one specific language. Of course, there are languages such as brainfuck and a bunch of others that you'd do well to avoid for many reasons but I take it we're limiting the discussion to the top 10 languages used to build everyday applications and web-apps, say Java, C++, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C# and whichever won't spring to mind at the moment.
thomasb 16y ago
Amen.... I've started to use more than one language, and it's made me a better programmer and far more understanding of how different languages approach problems. PHP does have problems, but it's easy to pick up. I don't know that learning it will make you a better programmer, but a good programmer can definitely make it solve problems efficiently enough.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Any new language you learn will make you a better programmer. Try picking one that is as far as possible from the ones you know and then try building something useful in it. That's the fastest way to broaden your horizons.
Jach 16y ago
This is pretty much the best advice. I began programming in PHP, and 95% of my web dev still uses it. (Though my latest project is using Python's Flask microframework.) I don't consider using it for anything else, even though PHP-GTK isn't too bad. My favorite language is Python, I've drunk heavily from the Scheme and Lisp koolaid, learning about programming games in C/C++ along with embedded systems that also use assembly here and there. And yet, for my own anecdote, at the start of the summer I got a job where the main part of my work is creating a Flex front-end application with Java services running on Tomcat/Jetty for the backend, using SOAP (though we do have REST hooks too generated automatically) as a data transfer protocol. It's kind of ugly at first, since hey, it's Java, but really it's not bad and my "I wish this was PHP/Python" moments grow more and more infrequent.

j_baker 16y ago

Just because you don't want to work with a language (especially PHP, dunno about Perl) doesn't make you a language snob. If you're closed off to any languages other than your preferred language, you're a language snob. That said, there's nothing wrong with programmers being picky about languages. Not only are languages what we're forced to think in day in and day out, but they affect what tools we can use, how we structure our code, and (like it or not) what jobs we can easily get.

corin_ 16y ago
Snobbery is defined as looking down on anything you consider inferior - for example in social classes, you can have middle class snobs without them thinking that every other class (including the upper class) are worse than them. So no, I'd disagree with your definition of 'snob'.
- j_baker 16y ago
  Dictionary.com seems to see my point of view as being valid: "a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field: a musical snob." Regardless, if avoiding languages I consider inferior make me a snob then I'm happy to proclaim myself a snob.
ryan-allen 16y ago
That is good advice, but what will PHP teach someone exactly? I don't believe it has anything interesting to offer someone who has learnt a number of languages. All it has going for it is that it has low barrier to entry and is a commodity in terms of it's developer and low-end hosting. I consider these as good selling points for PHP but that is all I think it has going for it. I think the social ecosystem of a language is very important, and I think there's more information and quality libraries in Ruby at the moment, so the popularity vote for PHP is a bit moot nowadays for web application development. I try not to be a snob, I try to use 'the best tool for the job' but I don't think PHP is a very good tool. And I'm sorry but as someone who uses these tools all day I do not consider it a good tool.
- Ixiaus 16y ago
  I agree with this strongly. I was a PHP programmer for quite some time, a good one at that. I started itching to move away from PHP beacause I knew of its weaknesses and the expressive beauty of python. Long story short, I am now a web application programmer that solely uses python. The argument that language choice doesn't matter, it's the engineer that matters, is very valid. I'm an excellent engineer in both and produce high quality working code in both. But python is clearer, more fun, and right.
- j_baker 16y ago
  "I try not to be a snob, I try to use 'the best tool for the job' but I don't think PHP is a very good tool." That was my point actually. :-) Just because you don't want to use PHP doesn't make you a snob.

jacquesm 16y ago

Language snobs, as a rule, are people that have not programmed in more than one language, or that somehow think that their chosen superior tool makes them superior as well. Nice to see that learning a 'crappy' language like PHP got you on to a more even keel in that respect.

jules 16y ago
On the contrary. Language snobs have programmed in multiple languages. That's why they can clearly recognize a flaw when they see it. If you've always used a tool with the same flaw you likely don't recognize it as a flaw and just think that that's the way it works. Or you do kinda recognize it as a flaw but don't realize how much it slows you down.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I've used quite a few languages and even though I see the flaws I just shrug and get on with the job at hand, re-writing something because a code base is not written in 'your' language is the mark of a pretty inflexible programmer. A language snob is someone who derives a feeling of superiority from the language they use, in reality the tools matter a lot less than language snobs will have you believe. I've worked with lots of people over the years, and some of them were all-out snobs about 'their' chosen language. These people were extremely irritating to work with because they refused to look past the minimal advantage that you derive from working in language a,b or c. The stuff most of us create could be implemented in just about any language without anything close to the kind of 'slowing down' that you allude to, it all boils down to how well you know your language and the environment you operate in, as well as knowledge about the domain you are building your work for. In my experience the choice of language has a relatively small impact on the speed of the initial build and the quality of that build. Over a longer term for less than rocket science style projects it is far more important to have good documentation and a supply of reasonably competent coders than that it is important to do your project in any one specific language. Of course, there are languages such as brainfuck and a bunch of others that you'd do well to avoid for many reasons but I take it we're limiting the discussion to the top 10 languages used to build everyday applications and web-apps, say Java, C++, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C# and whichever won't spring to mind at the moment.

thomasb 16y ago

Amen.... I've started to use more than one language, and it's made me a better programmer and far more understanding of how different languages approach problems. PHP does have problems, but it's easy to pick up. I don't know that learning it will make you a better programmer, but a good programmer can definitely make it solve problems efficiently enough.

jacquesm 16y ago
Any new language you learn will make you a better programmer. Try picking one that is as far as possible from the ones you know and then try building something useful in it. That's the fastest way to broaden your horizons.

Jach 16y ago

This is pretty much the best advice. I began programming in PHP, and 95% of my web dev still uses it. (Though my latest project is using Python's Flask microframework.) I don't consider using it for anything else, even though PHP-GTK isn't too bad. My favorite language is Python, I've drunk heavily from the Scheme and Lisp koolaid, learning about programming games in C/C++ along with embedded systems that also use assembly here and there. And yet, for my own anecdote, at the start of the summer I got a job where the main part of my work is creating a Flex front-end application with Java services running on Tomcat/Jetty for the backend, using SOAP (though we do have REST hooks too generated automatically) as a data transfer protocol. It's kind of ugly at first, since hey, it's Java, but really it's not bad and my "I wish this was PHP/Python" moments grow more and more infrequent.