[imdsm]

I agree. It's not always the language which makes it tough to integrate yourself into a project, sometimes it's all the frameworks, libraries, build tools, and general makeup of the project itself.

I worked for a company a few years back doing ASP.NET (my experience is mostly Linux based tech, but you can pick up a language, right?). The language was fine, the design patterns used all quite standard, but the project had an array of frameworks and libraries which made maintaining it painstaking.

In fact, I think you worked on it too.

[jghn]

I still find the "frameworks and libraries" argument to be false, but enough people say it that I believe it must be at least partially true. I'll settle for a belief that the argument is overstated.

IMO the largest issue is the breadth of one's experience, or lack thereof. And by that I don't mean simply the number of languages but how well versed one is in different languages and their surrounding ecosystems. For instance having good knowledge of both C# and Java isn't what I'm describing here.

[SimonPStevens]

I think it's about how much newness you have to handle at the same time. I can happily take a project using a framework or two I've never touched before. Or something in a new language but similar domain. But when you have the perfect storm of new language, tools and framework (and maybe OS) that's when it hurts. I'm not saying I totally couldn't switch, but it made me change me attitude a bit from '2 weeks and I'll be back at full productivity' to something more like '2 to the power of number of new things'. The more newness that has to be handled at the same time, the longer it takes to pick up all the interconnections.

[jghn]

This is also true, I would say it's a combo of the two. The more new things at once the more likely it is that you'll be working with something without a good correlation to something in your previous experience. But at the same time having a broader and richer base of experience will make it more likely that you'll have an easier go of it for any of those individual things.

[SimonPStevens]

> In fact, I think you worked on it too.

Oh dear, what code of mine have you seen? :-) (email address is in my profile if it's not something publicly discussable)

[imdsm]

Let's just say we've both worked for a particular online retailer who thought having the mobile site act like an app but not be an app would be a good idea.