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Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one?

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fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> writes:
(snip)
> most people learn this way - wide range of technologies, I stil wonder/consider if this is a good way as this is damn time consuming and if i should go 'wide' or 'narrow' (began to think that narrow is the way, this is like knowing a lot of people against knowing the few)

Do be prepared for your narrow expertise to become obsolete. I first
learned this after knowing the Commodore 64 inside out just in time for
everyone to be buying Amigas instead, though learning assembler helped
to then make C easier to learn. I was just reading an article on
comp.lang.postscript about how obsolete that is becoming -- I'd
profitably spent many hours writing in that, but if starting from
scratch it's not what I'd now choose. With a range of languages, it's
easy to hit the ground running in the new language du jour. For
instance, the given list included nothing like Mercury but, for
instance, a combination of C and Lisp help make JavaScript to make more
sense or, for my part, in my current job I was writing some Python last
week: I've never even sat down for a week with a book on Python, but I
am getting on easily with it through having previously done Perl 5 and
Haskell (significant whitespace, list comprehensions, lambdas, etc.).
Or, as another example, a combination of Modula-3's generics and Lisp's
macros helped me get to grips with C++, then those helped me get going
with Java (objects, threading, dynamism, etc.), and a combination of
object-orientation and Standard ML helped me impress at the OCaml
segment of a job interview even though I'd not used it previously. After
the investment in a diverse enough background, the resulting flexibility
is very useful. Truly new big ideas in language design don't come very
often, so once you've made that investment, it's not so hard to keep it
up to date: so, don't be daunted, it'll get easier. For instance, my web
stuff is getting out of date, but once I do finally get around to
learning about HTML5 canvases, SVG, etc., I expect that anything from
knowing PostScript to having written AWT LayoutManager instances may
well help me in that.

-- Mark

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is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-25 05:58 -0800
  Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-02-25 16:46 +0000
    Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 04:31 -0800
      Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-02-26 12:48 +0000
        Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 05:33 -0800
        Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 13:47 +0000
      Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 13:11 +0000
        Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 05:45 -0800
          Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 13:56 +0000
            Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 06:20 -0800
              Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 14:47 +0000
                Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 07:17 -0800
                Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 07:30 -0800

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