a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by MattholomewCup
MattholomewCup  ·  4271 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

I like this because, even though a lot of it is gloomy and depressing ("almost no one makes customer-facing software" and "profit centers of a business hear the word "programmer" as "cost sink"" stand out), there's some genuinely hopeful stuff in there. I really appreciate

    Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers? Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs. In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career. I did back-end Big Freaking Java Web Application development as recently as March 2010. Trust me, nobody cares about that. If a Python shop was looking for somebody technical to make them a pile of money, the fact that I’ve never written a line of Python would not get held against me.
because it highlights something; if you know the fundamentals of your work, the language you use is merely a tool, not your defining feature. It's something a business would want to hear - if they're spending money on you, they'd want you to be able to do as much as possible. As long as you have ideas, the rest is just the legwork of learning.

Also, god yes for communication skills. Brilliant people still need to communicate their brilliant ideas - otherwise, how will anyone but them know these ideas? Master communication, strive to write your best all the time, learn rhetorical techniques. I'm curious how far you can get on just a great sense of humor, on account of the fact that humor is pretty much understood to be a fantastic metric of someone with linguistic talent.