There are numerous spoken languages but most people successfully live a life knowing one or two. Unless you live in a part of the world with lots of international trade and your livelihood depends on being able to transact with a multitude of travelers, your time is better spent on things other than the syntax and semantics of various languages.
In programming, the same is true. But a fun beginner mistake is thinking that learning a little of lots of languages will help you become a better programmer. It happens because one language was difficult enough to grapple with and you don't really know what job prospects you'll desire once you acquire enough skill. What if the company you want to work for requires Spanish instead of French? In programming, you might think you should learn Ruby, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Java -- all so you'll be more ready for the job. Turns out this is wrong thinking.
What's really difficult about programming isn't the syntax of the language. Rather, it's the levels of abstraction that require practice to master. Once you understand the basics of transactions, it's a simple matter of mapping those concepts to the required grammar and syntax.
Want to become a more in-demand professional? Spend time doing hard work. Head down into the places most people aren't willing to go - and come back with a story of how you got there and back safely. This deep work will prove that you're the type of person who can spend time in the material and attain a rich understanding. Our brains will conclude that if you can figure it out once, you'll be able to get there again if you need to.
In summary - learn how to grow the hops, filter the water, boil the mash, bottle the beer and market the final product - rather than just learning how to say "Hold my beer" in ten different languages.
In programming, the same is true. But a fun beginner mistake is thinking that learning a little of lots of languages will help you become a better programmer. It happens because one language was difficult enough to grapple with and you don't really know what job prospects you'll desire once you acquire enough skill. What if the company you want to work for requires Spanish instead of French? In programming, you might think you should learn Ruby, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Java -- all so you'll be more ready for the job. Turns out this is wrong thinking.
What's really difficult about programming isn't the syntax of the language. Rather, it's the levels of abstraction that require practice to master. Once you understand the basics of transactions, it's a simple matter of mapping those concepts to the required grammar and syntax.
Want to become a more in-demand professional? Spend time doing hard work. Head down into the places most people aren't willing to go - and come back with a story of how you got there and back safely. This deep work will prove that you're the type of person who can spend time in the material and attain a rich understanding. Our brains will conclude that if you can figure it out once, you'll be able to get there again if you need to.
In summary - learn how to grow the hops, filter the water, boil the mash, bottle the beer and market the final product - rather than just learning how to say "Hold my beer" in ten different languages.
I am now at that stage where actually jumping around is helpful. I just began writing some code in .NET and It's been illuminating me because it helps me compare and contrast how Laravel does it to how .NET does it. But it took me awhile to get to this stage where such a comparison is possible.
At the beginner level such illumination isn't possible and so I think it's a distraction to learn another language. The only reason I would recommend beginners jump to a different language/stack would be if they already know that they don't like that given language. But they definitely shouldn't jump ship because of shiny object syndrome.
oh by the way i'm 99 percent confident now that there will no longer be double comment notifications when you @ someone. So @ away.