Last June I started work with a software engineering company that was using meteorjs heavily for their new product and php and java for their main product. Front end was standard jquery. At the time of joining, I had only ever used java, and that too in university for a project on multi threading/parallel processing. In about half a month I was acquainted with the basics of meteor and node js, and within a month I was completely up to speed with the intricacies of the development enivronment. (not all of them. By up to speed I mean, I had figured out where to look when I hit a gotcha). This included mongo db which I had never used till I joined.

I then shifted time to working both on the new product and the backend of their old product. I was using PHP and a framework (I can't remember which one) that I had never touched before. Took me about a week and a half to get up to speed before starting to work on the actual product.

This isn't some display of talent. I believe that any engineer who understands the fundamentals would do exactly what I did. (Provided they are willing to read documentation without skimming through it).

The point here is, I left that company in October. And they've just reopened the position I left vacant. Looking at the list of qualifications and experience required on that list, I couldn't help but think, I would have never thought myself adequate for the job if I had looked at the ad posted since I had never touched any of the stuff they required. Turned out, when it actually comes down to it, it really doesn't matter.

This analogy is actually spot on. Languages really do become another shade of paint at some point. And I never really believed in that till a couple of weeks ago when I saw that job posting. Pretty crazy that as an industry we still believe in this kind of hiring process.