3 ms·

If you program with any regularity, learning new languages usually gets easier as you age.

• JohnFen 3y ago
  So much this. Once you learn a particular programming paradigm (functional, OOP, etc.), the differences between languages in that paradigm are mostly syntactic, and learning a new syntax is pretty easy. And there are only a small handful of different paradigms. If you've been developing long enough, you've probably become competent in most, if not all, of them.
  • fragmede 3y ago
    > learning a new syntax is pretty easy. Going from C++ to eg Python or Java isn't much fun. Try going to Haskell or Rust, with the borrow checker.
    • bluefirebrand 3y ago
      This is my experience too. I can switch to another programming language and write the For Loops and branching logic and all that jazz no problem. But there's often a lot of nuances that you just don't know and it takes a while to accumulate that knowledge. Those are usually referred to as "Best Practices" and there usually isn't a single source of truth document out on the Internet or anywhere to learn all of them. They just come with experience and time, and maybe if you're lucky mentorship from a more experienced dev who knows those practices. This is very clear to me having watched Java devs flounder their way through building JavaScript microservices using all of the old Gang of Four patterns and basically zero of the modern ES functionality.
  • em-bee 3y ago
    when i hire people i look for those that have learned at least two programming languages. because learning the first language is somewhat hard. the second one is hard too, mostly because you think it's going to be as hard as the first one. but once you learned it you realize that it's really mostly the same, and from then on learning most languages is easy. same goes for frameworks