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This isn't my experience at all. The only talent developers who I have encountered who have learning another programming language are those who don't want to l

This isn't my experience at all. The only talent developers who I have encountered who have learning another programming language are those who don't want to learn it. JavaScript being a great example. I know a lot of developers who would rather spend hours picking about the language itself, rather than just learning how to use it. This is mainly older developers, in my experience, who have seen "the hot new thing" many times in their career, so they no longer want to put in the effort to learn something new - instead choosing to explain why it's a fad.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It is very easy to become jaded about the continuous onslaught of new technologies. However the flaws in JavaScript are right there, in your face as soon as you start using it.
bsder 6y ago
To be fair, web programming isn't programming in Javascript. Instead, it's programming FrameworkDuJour(tm) in Javascript. And the half-life of that is measured in months. So, the longer someone can drag their heels on learning FrameworkDuJour(tm), the better off they are. You can know Javascript cold and still be useless at web programming.
- ryandvm 6y ago
  This is sooo true. By staying on the back-end for a few years, I managed to avoid front-end JavaScript long enough to watch Angular come and go. Unfortunately, React has had quite a bit more staying power and I ended up having to pick up some proficiency with it. That said, the ecosystem evolves enough that no two projects ever seem to use the same tooling.
  - codyswann 6y ago
    This is kind of my point. Instead of just accepting that web programming is rapidly evolving, a developer just says "I'm not going to learn this". And that's completely fine. It's definitely a choice. What I'm saying is that it's not difficult to learn. It's a cognizant choice that learning isn't worth the effort.
    - realtalk_sp 6y ago
      > It's a cognizant choice that learning isn't worth the effort. They're very often not wrong. If you're trying to optimize for learning new concepts instead of new implementations (particularly when said implementations are ephemeral), then the right choice is usually to ignore the latest stuff unless it becomes an absolute necessity to adopt it. And most 'cutting edge' frameworks can be picked up in around a week or two once you have experience anyway. I remember it taking me about 4 working days to get the hang of RoR (with ~2 yrs of professional experience). Most developers would be better served spending their time learning soft skills around productivity, networking/politicking, communication, writing, and otherwise living well-balanced lives with the rest of their time. Hell even doing Leetcode is probably a better use of time than picking up the latest framework.
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      What the developer is saying is you can do a perpetually shallow crap job in a new context for every job, it's definitely a choice. Or you can do a deep not-crap job in a context you've actually invested time and experience in.
      - codyswann 6y ago
        If the developer chooses to do a shallow crap job, then sure. But that's the developer's choice, not the programming language's.
        Brian_K_White 6y ago
        That's all you got? Developer should just be sophisticated and experienced in every new thing immediately? We can all get by and pick up anything well enough to do a functional job, and we can all apply some bits of general experience in any language or other domain. But you confuse that with an actually good job? I submit that you just outed youself as never having done an actually good job.
  - winrid 6y ago
    Angular hasn't gone anywhere. AngularJS did.
    - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
      What you call "AngularJS" used to be referred to as just "Angular". Then Angular v2 and later were so different that Angular v1.x became known as AngularJS. But that's mostly just branding. They're essentially different frameworks.
      - winrid 6y ago
        Right. That's why I said AngularJS went away but Angular hasn't.
- twelve40 6y ago
  frameworks have been beaten to death, but it's bigger than that, the whole language morphs almost every year. Just a table of contents from Wikipedia article: ... 6th Edition - ECMAScript 2015 7th Edition - ECMAScript 2016 8th Edition - ECMAScript 2017 9th Edition - ECMAScript 2018 10th Edition - ECMAScript 2019 ... You can't even _name the language_ you are programming in without some mind-bending mental gymnastics. Even the names of the standards have off-by-one with their year. Do I program in ES6 or ECMAScript2015? ES6 is certainly not the same as just general colloquial "Javascript". I've recently worked with people who program professionally in Javascript and even React, and have not heard of ES6, and pump out apps and features that are completely incompatible with ES6, let alone later standards (and those are standards! not just some random library) And even frameworks themselves morph every year too, React with function components looks nothing like React a couple of years ago, and linters will barf at half the React methods that have been deprecated from just a couple of years ago, it's insane.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

It is very easy to become jaded about the continuous onslaught of new technologies. However the flaws in JavaScript are right there, in your face as soon as you start using it.

bsder 6y ago

To be fair, web programming isn't programming in Javascript. Instead, it's programming FrameworkDuJour(tm) in Javascript. And the half-life of that is measured in months. So, the longer someone can drag their heels on learning FrameworkDuJour(tm), the better off they are. You can know Javascript cold and still be useless at web programming.

ryandvm 6y ago
This is sooo true. By staying on the back-end for a few years, I managed to avoid front-end JavaScript long enough to watch Angular come and go. Unfortunately, React has had quite a bit more staying power and I ended up having to pick up some proficiency with it. That said, the ecosystem evolves enough that no two projects ever seem to use the same tooling.
- codyswann 6y ago
  This is kind of my point. Instead of just accepting that web programming is rapidly evolving, a developer just says "I'm not going to learn this". And that's completely fine. It's definitely a choice. What I'm saying is that it's not difficult to learn. It's a cognizant choice that learning isn't worth the effort.
  - realtalk_sp 6y ago
    > It's a cognizant choice that learning isn't worth the effort. They're very often not wrong. If you're trying to optimize for learning new concepts instead of new implementations (particularly when said implementations are ephemeral), then the right choice is usually to ignore the latest stuff unless it becomes an absolute necessity to adopt it. And most 'cutting edge' frameworks can be picked up in around a week or two once you have experience anyway. I remember it taking me about 4 working days to get the hang of RoR (with ~2 yrs of professional experience). Most developers would be better served spending their time learning soft skills around productivity, networking/politicking, communication, writing, and otherwise living well-balanced lives with the rest of their time. Hell even doing Leetcode is probably a better use of time than picking up the latest framework.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    What the developer is saying is you can do a perpetually shallow crap job in a new context for every job, it's definitely a choice. Or you can do a deep not-crap job in a context you've actually invested time and experience in.
    - codyswann 6y ago
      If the developer chooses to do a shallow crap job, then sure. But that's the developer's choice, not the programming language's.
      - Brian_K_White 6y ago
        That's all you got? Developer should just be sophisticated and experienced in every new thing immediately? We can all get by and pick up anything well enough to do a functional job, and we can all apply some bits of general experience in any language or other domain. But you confuse that with an actually good job? I submit that you just outed youself as never having done an actually good job.
- winrid 6y ago
  Angular hasn't gone anywhere. AngularJS did.
  - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
    What you call "AngularJS" used to be referred to as just "Angular". Then Angular v2 and later were so different that Angular v1.x became known as AngularJS. But that's mostly just branding. They're essentially different frameworks.
    - winrid 6y ago
      Right. That's why I said AngularJS went away but Angular hasn't.
twelve40 6y ago
frameworks have been beaten to death, but it's bigger than that, the whole language morphs almost every year. Just a table of contents from Wikipedia article: ... 6th Edition - ECMAScript 2015 7th Edition - ECMAScript 2016 8th Edition - ECMAScript 2017 9th Edition - ECMAScript 2018 10th Edition - ECMAScript 2019 ... You can't even _name the language_ you are programming in without some mind-bending mental gymnastics. Even the names of the standards have off-by-one with their year. Do I program in ES6 or ECMAScript2015? ES6 is certainly not the same as just general colloquial "Javascript". I've recently worked with people who program professionally in Javascript and even React, and have not heard of ES6, and pump out apps and features that are completely incompatible with ES6, let alone later standards (and those are standards! not just some random library) And even frameworks themselves morph every year too, React with function components looks nothing like React a couple of years ago, and linters will barf at half the React methods that have been deprecated from just a couple of years ago, it's insane.