The bit about a good programmer knowing a lot of unrelated technologies is entirely off-base, IMO. Better to specialize in one area and be the best you can be a

The bit about a good programmer knowing a lot of unrelated technologies is entirely off-base, IMO. Better to specialize in one area and be the best you can be at that than spend your time learning a lot of technologies you will never use, just for the sake of knowing them. I do think knowing more than one language is a definite plus, but keeping them all related makes perfect sense (a web stack, a java stack, etc.).Even great programmers who are infinitely passionate about what they do aren't going to enjoy every programming language out there, just by virtue of it being a programming language.