The size of your tool-belt
David Heinemeier Hansson, the create of Ruby on Rails responds to James Gosling’s deranged rants in a post on his blog:
Saying you’ll be everything to everyone, from “web presentations” to “interplanetary navigation” as Gosling puts it, is not free. You have to give up other desirable attributes to get that.
Which is fine, of course. If your model of the world is that you’re stranded on a desert island and you can only bring one tool. Or if your model of programmers is that they’re too busy/uninterested/dumb to to ever learn more than one platform.
Amen. If your tool-belt doesn’t have half-a-dozen languages or more in it, and a lot of other gadgets, then you’re just simply not a very good programmer. If you think all problems can be solved with one tool, you’re simply delusional, and need to go back on your medication.
This entry was posted at 7:43 pm on 11 March 2006 and is filed under Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
I don’t mean that a single problem needs multiple languages, just simply that one needs multiple perspectives. Similar to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I believe that the language you write in constrains your ability to solve a problem effectively.
I also do not consider simple knowledge of a language, or its syntax, to be enough to call it a “tool.” A tool implies you are actually skilled in its use.
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“If your tool-belt doesn’t have half-a-dozen languages or more in it, and a lot of other gadgets, then you’re just simply not a very good programmer.”
If the tool-belt has half-a-dozen languages or more, the owner may just be a novelty-driven gadget-freak to busy trying out new languages to become skilled in any of them.
If you think there are no problem domains where a single language will allow excellent solutions, you may have been misinformed.