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Building things is a great way to learn. That being said, the way this is presented leaves a bad taste in my mouth. > If you want to be a software engineer and

• XCSme 7y ago
  > I wonder how many people that call themselves programmers know that there is more to coding than just JavaScript I have a BSc in Computer Science, participated in informatic/algorithm contents/olympiads, created appliactions/games in C++, Java, PHP, JavaScript and other languages, yet in the last 5 years I programmed mostly in JavaScript. From my point of view, if you know JavaScript (TypeScript) in those days you can implement a solution to almost any real-world problem or application you might have. Yes, there might be better choices in some cases, but for most of the world what a product does is more important than how it's made. I also prefer to know a programming language and its ecosystem really well instead of having some vague knowledge of 10 different languages. If I implement something I want to implement it well and to know as soon as I write a line of code what it does and all its implications, edge cases and possible performance issues. I am not saying that you shouldn't adapt your toolset based on the project you are working on, but that it's better to have a tool that you can always rely on and whose ins and outs don't surprise you anymore. I am talking from the point of view of someone who builds stuff, creates products. Just learn a good-enough tool very well and then focus on the product itself instead of focusing on the tools.
  • snazz 7y ago
    Agreed. It's probably a good idea to gain some good depth in one particular language ecosystem, and JavaScript is a widely applicable choice. That said, playing with more "mind expanding" paradigms (logic programming, functional programming, Smalltalk-style OOP) is also good for your skills in any language.
    • hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Interestingly, Javascript has mind expanding properties of its own for people who have only bounced between Java/Ruby/Python/etc: it's async-everything, there's sync vs async errors to understand, promises, the event loop. You don't encounter anything like it in the listed langs unless you somehow work with Netty/Twisted/asyncio/etc.
• blueFishTwo 7y ago
  Yeah he is insufferable. Who is he to decide what a programmer is or is not?
  • BoorishBears 7y ago
    I think you need to be a little charitable in reading it. I come from the opposite end, I have no college degree and started programming with writing small BASIC apps on a calculator in middle school. I used to think I wasn’t a “real” programmer when I was in school because there was so much I didn’t know. But in retrospect 18 year old me was better prepared for an actual programming job than a lot of the new grads I’ve worked with. It’s not to say there weren’t huge gaps in my knowledge, but the thing is, actually writing code completely transforms you as a developer. A “programmer” that hasn’t ever worked on a project end to end is completely different than one who’s churned through one day in and day out for even a year. I’ve watched new grads make that transformation and it’s amazing. School will make you a better professional, and if you have a passion for it, let you additionally get you enough experience to hop straight into being a programmer confidently , but not everyone has that passion. - The same way I didn’t have enough passion except to do exactly as much was needed to let me write code in a professional setting, some students only have enough passion to get a degree which will let them be a professional and don’t really care that much about being able to execute right out of the gate. I don’t think either is less “noble” as the other, I was too lazy to get the fundamentals, I understand someone being just happy to get a degree, but both paths have very different effects based on the field (I mean, my path would be a dead end in most fields)
    • deleted 7y ago
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