3 ms·

There's quite a long term. POSIX and Unix knowledge? Decades. Win32 API? Also decades at this point. SQL databases and relational modelling. Expressing things i

There's quite a long term. POSIX and Unix knowledge? Decades. Win32 API? Also decades at this point. SQL databases and relational modelling. Expressing things in procedural programming, in functional programming, in logic programming. Concurrent programming. Most of that stuff applies in whatever syntax the language of the day has overlaid. At this point when I had to pick up Ruby I basically went "so it's a single dispatch, class based imperative language and the surface syntax for the things I need is blah. Right, we're good." And C and variants of Pascal have been around for decades, too. It's very easy to pick up details that aren't longterm skills, but with a little care you can make much of your skillset last a long time.

scarface74 7y ago
Anyone can pick up the syntax of the language. The ecosystem surrounding the language is a different story. I might be able to pick up Swift in as little as two weeks that doesn’t mean I could be a competent iOS or Mac developer. The same applies to Java and Java + iOS. The number of shops that still care about native desktop software has been dwindling weekly. Why would someone hire a developer who has no history of the ecosystem that the company is targeting over one that has the same experience and knows the ecosystem?
- madhadron 7y ago
  > The ecosystem surrounding the language is a different story. Is it? If you're being hired to worked in a particular setting, the choices from that ecosystem have probably been made. If there are really new abstractions that's one thing, but that's rarely the case. If you're being asked to make choices in a new ecosystem, that's different. But I think you also over estimate the depth of these ecosystems. > Why would someone hire a developer who has no history of the ecosystem that the company is targeting over one that has the same experience and knows the ecosystem? Lots of reasons. Social/emotional intelligence? Salary requirements? Proximity? And that's all assuming that you can find someone with the same experience that knows the ecosystem.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Ecosystem as in knowing Java and Android. Knowing C# and Entity Framework/ASP.Net. Knowing Swift and iOS.

scarface74 7y ago

Anyone can pick up the syntax of the language. The ecosystem surrounding the language is a different story. I might be able to pick up Swift in as little as two weeks that doesn’t mean I could be a competent iOS or Mac developer. The same applies to Java and Java + iOS. The number of shops that still care about native desktop software has been dwindling weekly. Why would someone hire a developer who has no history of the ecosystem that the company is targeting over one that has the same experience and knows the ecosystem?

madhadron 7y ago
> The ecosystem surrounding the language is a different story. Is it? If you're being hired to worked in a particular setting, the choices from that ecosystem have probably been made. If there are really new abstractions that's one thing, but that's rarely the case. If you're being asked to make choices in a new ecosystem, that's different. But I think you also over estimate the depth of these ecosystems. > Why would someone hire a developer who has no history of the ecosystem that the company is targeting over one that has the same experience and knows the ecosystem? Lots of reasons. Social/emotional intelligence? Salary requirements? Proximity? And that's all assuming that you can find someone with the same experience that knows the ecosystem.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Ecosystem as in knowing Java and Android. Knowing C# and Entity Framework/ASP.Net. Knowing Swift and iOS.