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Out of interest > As a programmer that picks up a new language every 2-3 years (and one that is privileged to have an employer that tolerates this) does this

Out of interest > As a programmer that picks up a new language every 2-3 years (and one that is privileged to have an employer that tolerates this) does this mean they allow you to tinker around on your own for this, or do you actually then start to deploy things to production written in the new language. After having quite a long career as a programmer, I realised that if I were ever CTO at a startup, unless there was an absolute proven need to switch languages, I'd mandate only a single language for our (back end) stack. The cost of supporting different languages is just too high.

bigfishrunning 10mo ago
I do deploy things in different languages -- We are a small team of open-minded programmers, and we are on a constant search for better tools and methods. I work for a robotics company (and have for many years), and having the flexibility to use Pion WebRTC (in Go) or PCL (in C++) or PyTorch (in Python) outweighs the cost of having software written in multiple languages.
- locknitpicker 10mo ago
  > I do deploy things in different languages -- We are a small team of open-minded programmers, and we are on a constant search for better tools and methods. This claim does not pass the smell test. Tech sprawl is a widely recognized problem, and dumping codebases each 2-3 years is outright unthinkable and pure madness. It doesn't even come across as resume-driven development because 3 years is not nearly enough to get anyone at a proficient level. This claim is so outlandish that I'm inclined to dismiss it entirely as completely made-up. There is no project manager in the world who would even entertain this thought.
  - bigfishrunning 10mo ago
    Your world seems small -- I never said anything about dumping codebases. If i have a library implemented in Rust, which gets called by a program written in C++ through FFI, and contacts a service which is implemented in python, I don't need to dump or waste any old work. A carpenter that only uses a hammer isn't a very good carpenter; different tools have different strengths and weaknesses.

bigfishrunning 10mo ago

I do deploy things in different languages -- We are a small team of open-minded programmers, and we are on a constant search for better tools and methods. I work for a robotics company (and have for many years), and having the flexibility to use Pion WebRTC (in Go) or PCL (in C++) or PyTorch (in Python) outweighs the cost of having software written in multiple languages.

locknitpicker 10mo ago
> I do deploy things in different languages -- We are a small team of open-minded programmers, and we are on a constant search for better tools and methods. This claim does not pass the smell test. Tech sprawl is a widely recognized problem, and dumping codebases each 2-3 years is outright unthinkable and pure madness. It doesn't even come across as resume-driven development because 3 years is not nearly enough to get anyone at a proficient level. This claim is so outlandish that I'm inclined to dismiss it entirely as completely made-up. There is no project manager in the world who would even entertain this thought.
- bigfishrunning 10mo ago
  Your world seems small -- I never said anything about dumping codebases. If i have a library implemented in Rust, which gets called by a program written in C++ through FFI, and contacts a service which is implemented in python, I don't need to dump or waste any old work. A carpenter that only uses a hammer isn't a very good carpenter; different tools have different strengths and weaknesses.