In 2021, Don't Learn a New Programming Language

In 2021, Don't Learn a New Programming Language(sushantsrivastava.substack.com)

51 points by shivaodin 5 years ago | 22 comments

stephen82 5 years ago |

My own concept is rather simpler I would say: apply the 80-20 rule; that is, 80% of your time, use the tool set you know best that get you paid and the remainder 20%, invest it in learning things that interest you.

Of course, when it's off or weekend days, feel free to swap the rule to 80% learning and 20% to anything else you must do.

Obviously it's just a suggestion, not a mandatory task, but hey; whatever works for you, isn't that right?

ricc 5 years ago | |

What’s important at the end of the day is to improve and not stagnate.

amw-zero 5 years ago |

This wasn’t what I expected, the bit about formal specification languages was really (pleasantly) surprising. I happen to have been spending a ton of time recently writing TLA+ and Alloy as the author mentioned. It’s completely changed my perspective on testing, definitely.

But the really surprising thing is how much they affected how I think about software overall. You know, at work I’m busy trying to build things. But taking a step back to understand what computation really is has been so helpful for even the code I’m writing on a daily basis.

Specifically with Alloy, which has an awesome state viewer, you can use it as a tool for prototyping ideas really quickly. It does suck that you can’t take that and use it to test your actual code, but I have ideas there :)

Anyway, yea I can’t recommend those tools enough. I think specification will grow in popularity soon - and no that doesn’t mean specifying your whole program up front. It’s totally possible to spec a program out iteratively. The value is huge - we write user stories and have product docs somewhere which explain what it is we’re building, but they get completely discarded after building. Having a highly simplified description of what a piece of software is expected to do is invaluable, especially as members come and go on the team. Agreed. In 2021, we don’t need another programming language. We need to master the tools and processes that we have.

anaerobicover 5 years ago |

I've heard the "fox plus hedgehog" idea before, as having a "T-shaped skill set". You have a familiarity with a range of related topics (this is the cap of the T) and deep understanding of a few things (the stem of the T). The premise is that this means you provide valuable expertise (for the deep part). But the breadth of basic knowledge means you are also able to collaborate and delegate well.

I've found that having other languages than my workaday ones in my repertoire is a valuable part of the cap of the T -- although it's certainly not the only kind of thing that should be there.

ropp 5 years ago | |

Also learning a new language, that is in some way related to the stuff you already know, is way less of a time comittment.

pdimitar 5 years ago |

Learn stuff when it makes sense.

Two and a half years ago I felt stuck working with only dynamic languages most of my career so I started learning Rust. Now I have an extremely powerful tool in my belt that solves problems that most dynamic languages cannot solve [adequately].

But I'm not going to learn yet another dynamic language if that won't make me any money or expose me to a new way of thinking, no. Nor will I relearn C++.

Furthermore, if I make a comeback to JS then I'll prefer to learn TypeScript and pick the most productive tools for it (Parcel struck me as mostly getting out of the way).

I get the overall sentiment of the article even if it expresses it rather poorly.

It has a good point, though; many of us the programmers are rather capricious and spoiled and get distracted by new shinies -- as opposed to learning several skills deeply and be then very useful to the business we're serving.

We easily forget that we do what we do for money.

johnisgood 5 years ago | |

> We easily forget that we do what we do for money.

That is good. I do not want to remember Java and Kotlin.

m_mueller 5 years ago | | |

Might be worth a revisit actually. After having kept off it for years I did a small project in Java for an interview some time ago, and a larger one as a postdoc a year before that. Its latest features, especially functional interfaces, makes it very powerful in a specific niche: The middle lands of software that does have stringent performance requirements - low latency from microseconds upwards and/or throughput, but not necessarily needing a cluster larger than some dozens of nodes. In such cases it is more productive than fully compiled system programming languages, while being much more performant than dynamic languages. Functional interfaces are a perfect match to do data centric designs in it.

pdimitar 5 years ago | | |

Well, you always have a choice. I branched out of lucrative careers... 3 times so far (so I am on the 4th full switch). And I still make more money than before.

hankchinaski 5 years ago |

unfortunately the tech industry doesnt work this way. i have switched programming languages and this got me to a much better financial and career position. so again it depends

kingsleyopara 5 years ago |

I'd planned on learning Rust this year, this article did little to convince me otherwise.

aldanor 5 years ago | |

After learning Rust 5-6 years ago, I haven't felt a need to learn anything else (before that I was learning / trying out a language or two a year).

ncmncm 5 years ago | | |

Let this be a warning.

crb002 5 years ago |

More concretely learn how to write specs in Gherkin/Cucumber and back them with TLA+ and Alloy before you code. Remember the speed of light (about 1 ns per foot) and annotate those specs with best case data travel latency.

Use holistic profiling like https://twitter.com/OptimyzeCloud/status/1351203905850519557

When you see performance issues then dig into your language stack and learn how to remediate them.