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There are diminishing returns to preparation: focus less on preparation (to include going to prestigious institutions and working for prestigious companies) and
by jonbarker 8y ago
There are diminishing returns to preparation: focus less on preparation (to include going to prestigious institutions and working for prestigious companies) and more on launching, learning, and iterating. This is true in business and a variety of other fields. As an add on: learn one programming language really well, and resist the urge to spend time learning new ones!
- cm2012 8y ago"diminishing returns to preparation" is a great turn of phrase.
- 131012 8y agoWhy the add on?
- Shikadi 8y agoSecond this, learning multiple languages is generally seen as a good thing, opening your mind to different ways of solving problems, no?
- taurath 8y agoIt’s helpful to specialize at least. One should at least have a primary that they know in and out.
- heavenlyblue 8y agoAny language in the area of discourse is a Turing-complete language. Therefore you can do anything you'd like to in any language. Besides, I would be highly critical of anyone who claims to know a variety of languages since it probably means they are only familiar with a strict subset of their standard libraries and quirks. Or that knowledge is incredibly outdated. Learning the syntax is one thing, the more time-consuming for development part is always knowing the quirks and patterns used today.
- Shikadi 8y ago>Any language in the area of discourse is a Turing-complete language. Therefore you can do anything you'd like to in any language. Well with that argument, learning brainf*ck in depth should give you all the programming experience you need to solve problems efficiently :P Learning even the basics of a functional programming language for example (Haskell in my case) lead me to understand why things are the way they are in a few other languages. Sure you can write some solution in a few nested for loops, but why not use a list comprehension if it's more clear and less error prone for the situation? Specializing in one or two languages isn't a bad thing, but I would argue that learning even just the basics of other languages is beneficial. Understanding what tools are out there and what they're best suited to is a good thing if you ask me.
- 131012 8y agoI'll ponder on that. Thanks for the shared wisdom!
- jonbarker 8y agoI'd say for me the way that 'overpreparation' has manifested itself is in trying to learn more languages, at the expense of expertise in one or two.
- asdsa5325 8y agoI disagree. Jobs want multiple languages nowadays.
- kamaal 8y agoGood jobs want you to know at-least one language well.