4 ms·

It depends. If he writes and supports all of his own programs and has success doing so it very well could be. Computers don't care, just as long as it compiles

It depends. If he writes and supports all of his own programs and has success doing so it very well could be. Computers don't care, just as long as it compiles down or uses standardized interfaces. If he plans to live a lot longer, hire a lot of employees, or collaborate with others on code, then your statement could be valid.

neilc 16y ago
If you really put your mind to it, sure, you could avoid learning any new programming languages. Hell, many people still make a very healthy living working with COBOL. But if you really enjoy being a software developer and want to be the best at what you do, I don't think you'll ever stop learning new languages.
- metamemetics 16y ago
  Let's look at spoken language. As humans move from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization [borrowing terminology from Michio Kaku], English is becoming the global language. It's certainly possible to never learn another language after English and be well off in a global economy. Advantages of English [paraphrased from "ESB" on antimoon]: -Germanic base has been mixed with the Roman vocabulary, giving it the best of both worlds -English is succinct. Sentenced translated from English into other languages take up at least 30% more space. English words are concise and so are its sentences. -Absence of sophisticated grammar systems. A noun can be easily turned into an adjective or a verb and vice versa. [ LISPy, eh? ] -It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth. This is not accidental, but perhaps an important underlying cause for their success. Just as English is dominating and will far outlive anyone's lifespan, the same could happen with a programming language as our languages continue to mature. Python is incredibly close to Psuedocode and LISP\LISP-variants are extremely flexible. It could be quite possible to get by without learning a new language until you either A) die or B) a paradigm shift occurs.
  - adimitrov 16y ago
    I'll disagree. The features you listed apply to other languages much better than they do to English (except the bit about influential countries.) Chinese has a richer vocabulary, is more succinct and has a much less sophisticated grammatic system than English. If you want to get rid of the daunting logosyllabic way of writing, go Korean. Almost the same advantages, with one of the most beautiful and simple alphabets in the world. If you want an even easier language, Bhasa (Indonesian) is probably your choice. Don't forget there's Esperanto, too. Arguably much better suited as a 'world' (or at least pan-Euro-American) language. In fact, English sucks as a `common' language from a lot of perspectives: it's got a very peculiar grammar. In fact, linguists concentrating their efforts on English has crippled a lot of research, and people are realizing (have been for a while, outside of the Anglo-Saxon area) that the paradigms that worked for English are pretty misplaced for other languages. English is an almost isolating language with a lot of inflection-based traits, a weird and very specific tense system, remnants of case that confuse the hell out of people, a fiendishly difficult preposition-system to replace case (including weirdness such as preposition stranding and long-distance dependencies,) very rich and productive idiomatic mechanisms and one roller coaster of an orthography (mostly due to its uncompromisingly inconsistent way of adoption of vocabulary.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on English. All languages are beautiful (except Volapük.) I'm just sick and tired of people with, very often, little to no linguistic authority making claims about the language's viability or suitability to be a language spoken world wide. As a linguist, you hear that all the time, and you just get tired of it :-( The only bit that matters - the reason I (an expat from an ex-socialist country living in western Europe, but not England) am talking to you over the Internet in English - is the cultural (and primarily militaristic!) dominance of the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants (i.e. Britain, America, Australia.) In fact, it's probably mostly due to Britain's vast empire in post-medieval times.
    - metamemetics 16y ago
      Exactly, English isn't perfect, yet it's still a great example of how something that's "good enough" can become dominant. I'm not saying it should be dominant, but that it is and will inevitably continue to be (there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain). Also I would argue it's not just due to Britain's empire, but Rome's and Germanic tribes creating a long evolutionary path up to American web pages. Regardless LISP variants are still closer to all spoken languages you mentioned than other programming languages. The main difference why the linguistic languages don't look like LISP variants is that languages can only be processed sequentially\linerarly one sound\word\morpheme at a time, this restriction isn't strictly required for a programming language that is primarily absorbed visuo-spatially. LISP is more similar to ALL spoken languages, so there is a lot of evolutionary indicators pointing to the possibility of long term [ > avg human lifespan ] dominance by a LISP implementation.

neilc 16y ago

If you really put your mind to it, sure, you could avoid learning any new programming languages. Hell, many people still make a very healthy living working with COBOL. But if you really enjoy being a software developer and want to be the best at what you do, I don't think you'll ever stop learning new languages.

metamemetics 16y ago
Let's look at spoken language. As humans move from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization [borrowing terminology from Michio Kaku], English is becoming the global language. It's certainly possible to never learn another language after English and be well off in a global economy. Advantages of English [paraphrased from "ESB" on antimoon]: -Germanic base has been mixed with the Roman vocabulary, giving it the best of both worlds -English is succinct. Sentenced translated from English into other languages take up at least 30% more space. English words are concise and so are its sentences. -Absence of sophisticated grammar systems. A noun can be easily turned into an adjective or a verb and vice versa. [ LISPy, eh? ] -It's spoken by the most influential and powerful countries on earth. This is not accidental, but perhaps an important underlying cause for their success. Just as English is dominating and will far outlive anyone's lifespan, the same could happen with a programming language as our languages continue to mature. Python is incredibly close to Psuedocode and LISP\LISP-variants are extremely flexible. It could be quite possible to get by without learning a new language until you either A) die or B) a paradigm shift occurs.
- adimitrov 16y ago
  I'll disagree. The features you listed apply to other languages much better than they do to English (except the bit about influential countries.) Chinese has a richer vocabulary, is more succinct and has a much less sophisticated grammatic system than English. If you want to get rid of the daunting logosyllabic way of writing, go Korean. Almost the same advantages, with one of the most beautiful and simple alphabets in the world. If you want an even easier language, Bhasa (Indonesian) is probably your choice. Don't forget there's Esperanto, too. Arguably much better suited as a 'world' (or at least pan-Euro-American) language. In fact, English sucks as a `common' language from a lot of perspectives: it's got a very peculiar grammar. In fact, linguists concentrating their efforts on English has crippled a lot of research, and people are realizing (have been for a while, outside of the Anglo-Saxon area) that the paradigms that worked for English are pretty misplaced for other languages. English is an almost isolating language with a lot of inflection-based traits, a weird and very specific tense system, remnants of case that confuse the hell out of people, a fiendishly difficult preposition-system to replace case (including weirdness such as preposition stranding and long-distance dependencies,) very rich and productive idiomatic mechanisms and one roller coaster of an orthography (mostly due to its uncompromisingly inconsistent way of adoption of vocabulary.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on English. All languages are beautiful (except Volapük.) I'm just sick and tired of people with, very often, little to no linguistic authority making claims about the language's viability or suitability to be a language spoken world wide. As a linguist, you hear that all the time, and you just get tired of it :-( The only bit that matters - the reason I (an expat from an ex-socialist country living in western Europe, but not England) am talking to you over the Internet in English - is the cultural (and primarily militaristic!) dominance of the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants (i.e. Britain, America, Australia.) In fact, it's probably mostly due to Britain's vast empire in post-medieval times.
  - metamemetics 16y ago
    Exactly, English isn't perfect, yet it's still a great example of how something that's "good enough" can become dominant. I'm not saying it should be dominant, but that it is and will inevitably continue to be (there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain). Also I would argue it's not just due to Britain's empire, but Rome's and Germanic tribes creating a long evolutionary path up to American web pages. Regardless LISP variants are still closer to all spoken languages you mentioned than other programming languages. The main difference why the linguistic languages don't look like LISP variants is that languages can only be processed sequentially\linerarly one sound\word\morpheme at a time, this restriction isn't strictly required for a programming language that is primarily absorbed visuo-spatially. LISP is more similar to ALL spoken languages, so there is a lot of evolutionary indicators pointing to the possibility of long term [ > avg human lifespan ] dominance by a LISP implementation.