[pdimitar]

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]

> 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]

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.

[johnisgood]

I work in Java and Kotlin still. I miss doing OCaml. I miss writing C. I am trying to keep my sanity by doing Erlang[1] (gonna be our server for various purposes and I did not want to use Go because I thought it would be a great opportunity to perfect Erlang) and reading old books on Forth. I am also reading "Fundamentals of Embedded Software: Where C and Assembly Meet". For the foreseeable future I will do more designing and reading than implementing, but I will be toying around of course; for example right now I am doing hot upgrades and release handling in Erlang so I will not hesitate much due to ignorance when the time comes. This is just a minor part of it, of course.

In any case, Java, and especially Kotlin are quite tolerable with IntelliJ. It is a great IDE for those two at least. Plus I get paid, which is also a motivator... :D

[1] Truth be told, it is difficult to keep that sanity because I dislike the OTP documentation. I am reading books instead. I already know what their "target_system" does anyway, I modified it a lot for my use case but I reverted it because I thought it would be more of a hassle in the end.

[pdimitar]

I invite you to learn Elixir instead. Plus the forum is extremely welcoming and there are very easily digestible and much more carefully crafted docs compared to Erlang.

Plus, macros (basically, generators of code). How can you say no to that?

[pdimitar]

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.

[johnisgood]

I lack connections because I did not care about money and such before the age of 25. :/ Of course I also lack qualifications. I only have my code repository, and I can talk about the projects I made for some clients. In any case, it is quite difficult because I have lots of anxiety. I feel like I would fail or would not know enough.

[pdimitar]

I am 40 and I started caring about career and repouation less than a year ago.

You will always have something that you don't know. Took me a loooong time to get over it. Try and short-circuit this struggle because it would otherwise never end.

[johnisgood]

I do not know how to. :/ I can work for clients because it is different than working for a company, but... not enough money and not stable enough, sadly.

[pdimitar]

I don't understand. You don't want to work for companies?