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In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for yo

• anon1385 15y ago
  I have put in at least a few weeks trying to learn Haskell. I certainly never got to the point of being able to solve real world problems with it. Even after 2 years of coding in C most days of the week I wouldn't claim to know it well, and wouldn't be able to keep up with a 'real' C programmer. I've also spent far more than a few weeks (cumulatively) using Javascript and don't really have a solid grasp of the language (although in that case I have made no effort to actually learn the language). Maybe this just reflects my poor aptitude for programming and I've very much behind the curve, so to speak. In which case it is probably correct that recruiters would do well to avoid recruiting me and to filter out those who are not able to learn new languages in a few weeks.
• _delirium 15y ago
  It depends on the job, I think. I'm not even a C++ wizard myself, and yet it's pretty easy for me to tell apart the people who've been doing it for 6 months versus 6 years. If they're good, both will know the language in some sense; the main difference is that the one who's been doing it for 6 years will have a much bigger mental database of gotchas to be aware of, idioms to use in common situations, interaction between features, etc. Somewhat true for C also. It's a much smaller language, but there's a fair amount of best-practice and idiom to pick up to be a great C programmer.