26 Apr
2016
26 Apr
'16
11:01 a.m.
On Apr 25, 2016, at 4:46 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart at bellsouth.net> wrote:
...To tell you the truth, I'm not very
likely to hire anyone who isn't conversant with at least half a
dozen different languages. ...
Although I agree with almost everything Brian said in his post, I?ll posit at least one
exception here. There exist languages (the Mathematica programming language is the one I?m
familiar with) which permit programming in multiple different styles - procedural,
list-processing, object-oriented, etc.. I would be pretty willing to consider a candidate
who understood the differences, and could select the appropriate programming style for the
task at hand, even if they were familiar with only the one ?language?. But, it would not
be trivial to demonstrate that the candidate actually had that breadth of understanding;
production of sample code in a half-dozen languages would be an easier metric to apply, so
maybe my exception is not useful.
- Mark