[nly]

It's a cute theory, but the reality is most employers want you to be relatively efficient from day dot.

I work in a team with a codebase split 50/50 between C# and C++, and if you're not proficient in one of those then the chances of you getting hired, even if you're an incredible programmer, are slim.

[dnissley]

This is a trait of an employer that I consider a red flag. If they don't understand that most programming languages are pretty similar, and can be picked up quickly by any willing person, they probably don't understand a lot of other things in regards to tech

[julianeon]

That's not fair. The whole point of "footguns" is that they are not obvious and that the reason more experienced people don't set them off, is because they've directly experienced their results before.

Our industry went to the trouble of inventing a whole new language (Rust), which is now being championed by major industry players, because those footguns are so non-obvious. "Trusting" smart people to "just not make mistakes with pointers" was clearly the wrong choice.

If you haven't used C and C++ before, it's reasonable to think you're going to make those first-time mistakes with your code inside their codebase. That's a good argument for not hiring you and only hiring experienced C/C++ programmers.

In practice, that's exactly what those companies do.

[hardware2win]

Quickly=?

[wizofaus]

"Any willing person"=?

[whimsicalism]

Having a C# codebase and being unwilling to hire Java developers seems like unnecessarily constraining yourself.

[metaltyphoon]

Depends a lot on what type of software is b ing written. The people that keep beating the drums that Java = C# have not worked with the language extensively enough. So many things outside of basic languages constructs are different. Tooling is also a big hurdle to change too.

[wizofaus]

I've worked in both extensively, and there are certainly far more similarities than differences. I've put C# devs on to Java codebases and got them up to speed very quickly. But you still need to have Java pros that know all the gotchas etc. to do the code reviews.

[Shorel]

The reality is that today's job market is not ten-years-ago market.

Employers and companies can't find enough developers to satisfy the demand.

They should provide a bit of wiggle room and train internally as well. Three months getting into a new language/framework is not that much compared with the cost of hiring.