Hacker News Reader

The author suggested you should change not only the toolset you use, but also the languages.

That makes it more than a light switch, and will probably interfere with getting work done. Since, you know, many companies have standards about which languages and platforms they stick to.

View on HN

Firstly, learning more than one programming language will make you a better programmer.

Secondly, you are at liberty to write code in your free time, where you can experiment with whatever language/IDE/OS combinations you deem fit. I'd argue this will also make you a better programmer.

Fine, don't change the language. Keep using the same thing for 10 years until it becomes obsolete and then wonder why you're unemployed (hint: nothing to do with outsourcing).

Is lisp obsolete yet?

From the point of view of the average programmer: yes. There are some Lisp jobs available but those are usually taken by the best programmers (as opposed to the ones that look for excuses not to learn new things).

From a quick search on dice here are the number of job listings for lisp, cobol and java.

Lisp: 26 Cobol: 1007 Java: 15494

Reply on news.ycombinator.com