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I mostly disagree with this blog post. I think one of the most important things to do, if you're starting a job at a company that uses a language you don't have

I mostly disagree with this blog post. I think one of the most important things to do, if you're starting a job at a company that uses a language you don't have experience in, is to ask the hiring manager what recommendations they have for learning that language. If possible, ask them to ship you the recommended 1-2 books before you start. It's true that there's languages so big that any company will use a somewhat-unique subset of the language, but that's not true of all languages. And if it is true, that's why it's important to ask someone at the company for the right resources to learn the right idioms in that language, for that company. The part I do agree with is that there will be a lot of company-specific stuff like tooling, build process, frameworks, libraries, etc. It's a mistake to think you can "hit the ground running" with a language you haven't used before at a new company, and no amount of studying will change that. All you can do is gain enough familiarity with the language syntax and common idioms that your pattern-matching facilities are already primed, so that when you look at source code you see words and sentences, not characters, if that makes sense. Use the language books as a resource over the first few months as you ramp up on the combination of programming languages, business problems/solutions, infrastructure, build tools, dev tools, etc. Don't treat pre-start book study as a silver bullet. And if your life circumstances don't give you time to do any pre-start study, don't sweat it; most good employers will give you plenty of leeway to learn on the job as long as you show increasing proficiency over a couple months. But if you have the time, resources, and inclination, absolutely do learn a new language used at a new job prior to your start date.

Theaetetus 4y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I address it (briefly) in a follow-up: https://www.natemeyvis.com/on-studying-for-your-upcoming-job-objections-and-replies.html https://www.natemeyvis.com/on-studying-for-your-upcoming-job.... People might not know what the code base is actually like; they have incentives to overstate its quality; and, even if they can point you to a relevant, authoritative book, that doesn't entail that the hour spent with it is better than an hour spent learning a tool.
- bcbrown 4y ago
  I still disagree, but I think I better understand the disagreement now. I find it easiest to learn a new language by starting with the canonical beginner's book, e.g. the Pickaxe book for Ruby. I find it hard to learn tooling like CI/CD, logging/metrics, etc by reading or through personal projects, I much prefer to learn those on-the-job as necessary. It seems like it might be the inverse for you. Even if a new codebase isn't exactly 'Effective Java' quality, it's good to have that reference to better articulate to yourself exactly how the codebase is flawed.

Theaetetus 4y ago

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I address it (briefly) in a follow-up: https://www.natemeyvis.com/on-studying-for-your-upcoming-job-objections-and-replies.html https://www.natemeyvis.com/on-studying-for-your-upcoming-job.... People might not know what the code base is actually like; they have incentives to overstate its quality; and, even if they can point you to a relevant, authoritative book, that doesn't entail that the hour spent with it is better than an hour spent learning a tool.

bcbrown 4y ago
I still disagree, but I think I better understand the disagreement now. I find it easiest to learn a new language by starting with the canonical beginner's book, e.g. the Pickaxe book for Ruby. I find it hard to learn tooling like CI/CD, logging/metrics, etc by reading or through personal projects, I much prefer to learn those on-the-job as necessary. It seems like it might be the inverse for you. Even if a new codebase isn't exactly 'Effective Java' quality, it's good to have that reference to better articulate to yourself exactly how the codebase is flawed.