Hacker News Reader

Comment by archibaldJ | Hacker News Reader

> ...The language doesn't matter much to me, I know enough of them to know that they are all very similar and thus easy enough to learn. If you know of a good opportunity, let me know.

One advice: be careful when you make claims like this, even if you are an extremely competent programmer, because it sounded extremely aggorant.

Picking up a new tech (framework, language, etc) during the job vs having years of experience building things with the tech makes a huge difference in terms of productivity.

Being language(or framework)-agonostic is cool. But saying languages are very similiar indicates that you probably know none of them in depth. Every language (or framework, etc) is its own microcosmo. (i.e. at the compiler level, design-pattern's level, etc).

View on HN

It's a fair comment but you have to admit that the javascript world presents a set of problems that go way beyond the language itself. The problems are different in backend development and in a way they feel a bit more contained.

In the java world I feel I know exactly what to do even though it bores me to tears. In Go I know where to look, same can be said for python and dotnet.

As much as I love the really interesting things I can do in the JS ecosystem I find debugging large projects excruciating. I didn't find the comment particularly arrogant and it rang true to my experience.

I'm asking you this as I believe it will help me in the future. Is having the knowledge about the tool better that having the skills to solve a set of problems? If I really want a position within a specific company (for whatever reason) but they use a language with which I haven't worked before but am willing to learn (and definitely have the learning skills for that!), would I be in a disadvantage with respect to another candidate, one that has extensive knowledge about the language (and ecosystem), even if I would have experience in the "field of the app being built"?

The answer to your question is a big stonking depends. There are some skills and knowledge that are transferable across languages and ecosystems. Some companies are happy to find good talent that are willing to learn and will teach them the specifics of their language and ecosystem. Other companies are unwilling to take on people who don't have 5 years experience in their stack. I once had a company reject me outright because the majority of my experience is with React and they use Vue. Both are Javascript libraries and more similar than they are different. Sometimes the argument in those cases is they need someone who can get the work done yesterday, other times its mere tribalism.

Your best bet is to build a couple of side projects with the language you're interested in and use it as proof that you've passed superficial interest and are willing to learn. After that its down to finding a company or a team that are willing to give you a shot. They are out there.

That's a red flag to stay away from the company anyway if they have no onboarding or mentoring.

how is it justifiable to expect every company to pay you to learn shit lol

To second another comment. You have the domain knowledge so that is a valuable place to start. Build the applications in that domain you have experience in, on different tech stacks as side projects to demonstrate the competency. Ultimately, that's all experience is on your CV and the technical interview will be their opportunity to plumb the depths of your knowledge.

Everything else, and I don't know how to stress this enough, is interview technique.

Didn't mean to be arrogant at all. I simply said it because I have created things in a variety of languages, and to tell whoever was reading and looking for a BE engineer that I have no problem learning new languages that I may not know. Now obviously since I haven't been exclusively a BE engineer, I'm not an expert in BE, but I'm more than happy to be given the chance to become one, which is essentially the whole point of the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com