I think what he's getting at is that to be a master programmer, you need to be master of something - and it doesn't really matter which language. If you are th

I think what he's getting at is that to be a master programmer, you need to be master of something - and it doesn't really matter which language. If you are thinking of learning a new language, ask yourself why. Is it because it's going to make you a better programmer? Is it because all the cool kids down at the Club House are talking about it? Is it because you're stuck with a problem in a language, and instead of overcoming that problem, you're just jumping to a new language hoping that language won't have any problems? When you've really mastered one language, mastering a second one is much easier. Whereas if you learn the basics of one language, and then the basics of another, ad infinitum, you never really master anything. Compare to learning to play musical instruments. Who is the better musician - somebody that can play Chopsticks on 20 instruments, or somebody that can play Brahams but only on the piano? The first has a lot more to learn than the second. Finally, it's better to master a domain than a programming language. In the long run, it's more rewarding (personally and financially) to be the world's leading expert in, say, security in C++ than it is to be the world's 10,000th best developer in Ruby, Clojure, Go, etc.