Number of languages known [was Re: Python is readable] - somewhat OT

[Rodrick Brown]

At my current firm we hire people who are efficient in one of the following and familiar with any another C#, Java, C++, Perl, Python or Ruby.

We then expect developers to quickly pick up any of the following languages we use in house which is very broad. In our source repository not including the languages I've already stated above I've seen Fortran, Erlang, Groovy, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Mathlab, C, K, R, S, Q,  Excel, PHP, Bash, Ksh, PowerShell, Ruby, and Cuda.

We do heavy computational and statistical analysis type work so developers need to be able to use a vast army of programming tools to tackle the various work loads were faced with on a daily basis. 

The best skill any developer can have is the ability to pickup languages very quickly and know what tools work well for which task.

On Mar 22, 2012, at 3:14 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 4:44 AM, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> The typical developer knows three, maybe four languages
>> moderately well, if you include SQL and regexes as languages, and might
>> have a nodding acquaintance with one or two more.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "moderately well", nor
> "languages", but I'm of the opinion that a good developer should be
> able to learn a new language very efficiently. Do you count Python 2
> and 3 as the same language? What about all the versions of the C
> standard?
> 
> In any case, though, I agree that there's a lot of people
> professionally writing code who would know about the 3-4 that you say.
> I'm just not sure that they're any good at coding, even in those few
> languages. All the best people I've ever known have had experience
> with quite a lot of languages.
> 
> ChrisA
> -- 
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