My own experience is that there are PLENTY of programmers who have used, say, PHP and Python, but who you wouldn't want to touch your C codebase in a pair-programming session.
If you've used C++ and C, then sure, you can probably jump to just about any language. Someone who's only used Python (or worse, Java or PHP) will likely be a danger to themselves and others for the first year or three using C.
I started out with assembly, then went to C and then all the C-family based languages. Non C-family languages are actually rare enough to neglect for 99% of all programming tasks today.
Always remember going from something difficult to simple is easy, but going from something simple to difficult is not easy.
HTML->CSS->php->javascript->C#->Visual Basic->Java->Ruby->Python->C->Go->Scheme->Lisp->Haskell
I believe the "python way" and "pythonic" code that the community pushes is great for newbies, since it gets them thinking about not just writing code, but writing it idiomatically.
This, in turn, makes most think about why doing it the "pythonic" way works better.
Great. There are plenty of hard working people to make this "piece of wisdom" completely worthless.
>Starting out with Python as a newbie is disastrous.
... why?
There are plenty of programmers that wouldn't want to touch C to begin with, regardless of past experience. Anyway, why would you ask somebody with no experience in C to develop your C codebase?
>If you've used C++ and C, then sure, you can probably jump to just about any language.
Nope.
The message I replied to said:
>It's quite strange to me that people would identify as or look for a "[language] programmer".
So what I was saying was that you would want a C programmer to develop in a C codebase.
>There are plenty of programmers that wouldn't want to touch C to begin with, regardless of past experience.
I wouldn't want to do a lot of original development in C myself. I have used C -- and assembly language -- to do nontrivial things in the past. But I'm ready to be done with C myself.
>>If you've used C++ and C, then sure, you can probably jump to just about any language.
>Nope.
Umm...[citation needed].