Does anyone else have almost no interest in other languages?

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When I learned to code I learned python. I then learned a couple other things, SQL mainly, and very basic HTML, CSS, JS, the usual suspects. I can read other code fine, obviously, and I understand what I feel like are a lot of the core concepts of programmin.

My issue is I never want to learn a new language. I read things alllll the time about general programming concepts and python specific things, but just never want to say go and learn C.

Does anyone else feel like this? I love programming, but only specifically some bits.
 
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I've always found I'm in no hurry to jump into other languages - I think part of that is how so many languages aren't particularly intuitive and/or have odd functionality that outwardly at least makes no sense - sometimes seems almost like it is done differently just to differentiate it from other languages rather than any benefits.

Or on the other hand go over the top trying to cram features in - which actually gets in the way when trying to build something simple and then expand on it - even if it makes it quicker or more powerful for some things with less work.

EDIT: PS IMO the 2 greatest things for programming ever made:

https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/c-refcard.pdf
https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse351/14sp/sections/1/Cheatsheet-c.pdf
 
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Learning the language is just a first step. The difference in knowing a language and being really productive is the ecosystem around it: build tools, common libraries used, how you organise code once the application grows (modules, libraries etc), where to go for help (other than stack overflow!), design and architecture patterns for bigger applications, writing something that can be maintained and built on. I think the ecosystem part is at least ten times more than the language - and when you're just trying to get something working, its often easier just to slip back to the familiar.

python is great, you can do a hell of a lot with it straight out of the box - and where its not so good (or just slow), someone else has likely written a library in C/Cython to do it instead (think numpy, matplotlib etc) and you can call that as if it was plain old python code.

Java guy here, I tend to just use python for scripting as its far cleaner than shell scripts. I do check out other languages every so often, but keep coming back to what pays the salary.
 
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I'm no longer a full time programmer. But in the early days of Java I fell in love with it. I used it for everything. If there was a problem then my solution was Java. I would hammer that square Java peg into a round hole and make it work. But although I don't code much nowadays I've come to embrace many languages. Each one has its strengths and I can now hit a round peg into a round hole with much less effort. For example I started using Python as a simple scripting language and hated it compared to Java. But the more I use it the more I've come to appreciate its strengths and really enjoy using it now. But the point is that I don't consider myself a Java developer anymore. I'm a programmer (or at least I was) and a language is just a tool in the same way that a hammer, screwdriver, a drill or a saw is a tool used by a builder. I do occasionally dabble in languages sich as Kotlin and Go to see what's good about them so I have them "in my toolbox" if I need them.

I still hate HTML/CSS though :D
 
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I just dont have time for the hundreds of other possible languages. So mostly stuck with .NET and SQL Server over the years (combined with the usual web stack stuff) and some dabbling with Angular.
 
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I've always found I'm in no hurry to jump into other languages - I think part of that is how so many languages aren't particularly intuitive and/or have odd functionality that outwardly at least makes no sense - sometimes seems almost like it is done differently just to differentiate it from other languages rather than any benefits.

Or on the other hand go over the top trying to cram features in - which actually gets in the way when trying to build something simple and then expand on it - even if it makes it quicker or more powerful for some things with less work.

EDIT: PS IMO the 2 greatest things for programming ever made:

https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/c-refcard.pdf
https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse351/14sp/sections/1/Cheatsheet-c.pdf
Haha yeah I love a good cheat sheet or cookbook. My main problem is I can always say "I could learn to do this in X, but I already know how to do it in python so why bother?"
 
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Learning the language is just a first step. The difference in knowing a language and being really productive is the ecosystem around it: build tools, common libraries used, how you organise code once the application grows (modules, libraries etc), where to go for help (other than stack overflow!), design and architecture patterns for bigger applications, writing something that can be maintained and built on. I think the ecosystem part is at least ten times more than the language - and when you're just trying to get something working, its often easier just to slip back to the familiar.

python is great, you can do a hell of a lot with it straight out of the box - and where its not so good (or just slow), someone else has likely written a library in C/Cython to do it instead (think numpy, matplotlib etc) and you can call that as if it was plain old python code.

Java guy here, I tend to just use python for scripting as its far cleaner than shell scripts. I do check out other languages every so often, but keep coming back to what pays the salary.
This is a great point. It's a huge reason why learning a new language feels so daunting I guess, and the easy option is always stick to what you know.
 
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I'm no longer a full time programmer. But in the early days of Java I fell in love with it. I used it for everything. If there was a problem then my solution was Java. I would hammer that square Java peg into a round hole and make it work. But although I don't code much nowadays I've come to embrace many languages. Each one has its strengths and I can now hit a round peg into a round hole with much less effort. For example I started using Python as a simple scripting language and hated it compared to Java. But the more I use it the more I've come to appreciate its strengths and really enjoy using it now. But the point is that I don't consider myself a Java developer anymore. I'm a programmer (or at least I was) and a language is just a tool in the same way that a hammer, screwdriver, a drill or a saw is a tool used by a builder. I do occasionally dabble in languages sich as Kotlin and Go to see what's good about them so I have them "in my toolbox" if I need them.

I still hate HTML/CSS though :D
This is EXACTLY where I'm at now. Eveything is a python problem to me, it's just so much easier.

How do you go about learning a new language? What makes you pick one to try and what are you first steps?
 
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I just dont have time for the hundreds of other possible languages. So mostly stuck with .NET and SQL Server over the years (combined with the usual web stack stuff) and some dabbling with Angular.
Oh man I tried angular a while back and it killed me (Although to be fair I think it was mainly css that killed me, I generally hate anything frontend)
 
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Haha yeah I love a good cheat sheet or cookbook. My main problem is I can always say "I could learn to do this in X, but I already know how to do it in python so why bother?"

While I'm not a huge fan of C/C++ this is one of the things for me - some languages you can create a 1-2 page cheat sheet and everything else you need to know, even a lot of details in regard to the whole ecosystem, can be inferred or extrapolated from that but other languages 200 page manual later and there are still important basic features/functionality which you'd have no idea existed or couldn't work out how to properly use them even from all that without a specific section on them, etc.
 
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This is EXACTLY where I'm at now. Eveything is a python problem to me, it's just so much easier.

How do you go about learning a new language? What makes you pick one to try and what are you first steps?
I tried Python because I had moved out of a developer role at work and needed something for scripting that was available easily for other people to amend when I wasn't there and without needing a complex IDE or access to a code repository. It fitted the bill perfectly and I've since found other uses for it. The sheer number of libraries available to do anything from processing excel files through to categorising files of data, to web development with Flask and Django is fantastic.

I learned PHP when I needed to create a website. But I've since started to look at Python Django for that. I took a look at Kotlin so see if it's more useful than Java while still running on the JVM and being compatible with Java, and also in case I managed to finish my website idea and wanted to add an Android app. I took a look at Go out of general interest and because it's so much faster than Java, Kotlin and Python. So I'll take a look at a language either out of general interest because it's getting popular and I want to see what the fuss is about (such as Go) or due to a genuine need (PHP, Python, Kotlin). I won't necessarily learn it in-depth. I'll learn just enough to know whether it's the right tool for the job. Then I'll know enough about it to consider it in the future if that tool fits that need.

But one thing I have done is to standardise on a single IDE; Jetbrains IntelliJ based IDE's. I have an "All Products" personal license. So all of those languages work on variants of the same IDE and I don't need to learn to use a different IDE or a different IDE plugin. It's 99% the same. I'd like to take a look at Rust and Javascript but i just don't have the time at the moment.
 
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I tried Python because I had moved out of a developer role at work and needed something for scripting that was available easily for other people to amend when I wasn't there and without needing a complex IDE or access to a code repository. It fitted the bill perfectly and I've since found other uses for it. The sheer number of libraries available to do anything from processing excel files through to categorising files of data, to web development with Flask and Django is fantastic.

I learned PHP when I needed to create a website. But I've since started to look at Python Django for that. I took a look at Kotlin so see if it's more useful than Java while still running on the JVM and being compatible with Java, and also in case I managed to finish my website idea and wanted to add an Android app. I took a look at Go out of general interest and because it's so much faster than Java, Kotlin and Python. So I'll take a look at a language either out of general interest because it's getting popular and I want to see what the fuss is about (such as Go) or due to a genuine need (PHP, Python, Kotlin). I won't necessarily learn it in-depth. I'll learn just enough to know whether it's the right tool for the job. Then I'll know enough about it to consider it in the future if that tool fits that need.

But one thing I have done is to standardise on a single IDE; Jetbrains IntelliJ based IDE's. I have an "All Products" personal license. So all of those languages work on variants of the same IDE and I don't need to learn to use a different IDE or a different IDE plugin. It's 99% the same. I'd like to take a look at Rust and Javascript but i just don't have the time at the moment.
Go is about the only language that has interested me, I just haven't had the time yet to get stuck into it.

Have you tried vscode? It's my go to, I've never used anything else once I progressed from sublime text :cry:
 
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Go is about the only language that has interested me, I just haven't had the time yet to get stuck into it.

Have you tried vscode? It's my go to, I've never used anything else once I progressed from sublime text :cry:
Not used it much. I was using Eclipse for Java development before I got IntelliJ. When I needed an editor for PHP I started with Sublime too and then wanted something a little more integrated. I considered VSCode and IntelliJ and went for IntelliJ in the end (well actually the PHP editor is called PHPStorm but it's really just a PHP focused version of IntelliJ). I should take another look at VSCode as it is a great editor and honestly I think anything extra in IntelliJ could probably be added as a plugin to VSCode anyway. But I have used Jetbrains technical support when something wasn't working in the editor how I expected (when I was trying to cross-compile a Go program from Linux to Windows) and their response was fantastic. Others in my team use Pycharm for their Python scripts and this is based on IntelliJ so the similarity is useful too.
 
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"So I'll take a look at a language either out of general interest because it's getting popular and I want to see what the fuss is about or due to a genuine need" - This is pretty much it and I think a lot of people learn Python first nowadays and don't really 'need' another language because it does nearly everything most people will need coding for, so unless you have a love for coding (like people do with natural languages), you're unlikely to move away unless you have a requirement - for work or performance.

I'm a dabbler, so love to look at different things in all aspects, including coding - it's nice to know what each one excels at and get a feel for each and try to specialise in one or two.
 
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Its definitely off putting. At uni we were forced to take C++, biggest horror when its the first language you try and pick up. Few years later I picked up VB again as its quite forgiving, I still use it for VBA. Python to me seems the least punishing from the recent past. I found SQL manageable but again if your not doing it regularly you soon forget or get really rusty.

I suppose if your day job is a developer you never forget much and far easier to migrate between languages once you get a healthy core base under your belt.
 
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Not used it much. I was using Eclipse for Java development before I got IntelliJ. When I needed an editor for PHP I started with Sublime too and then wanted something a little more integrated. I considered VSCode and IntelliJ and went for IntelliJ in the end (well actually the PHP editor is called PHPStorm but it's really just a PHP focused version of IntelliJ). I should take another look at VSCode as it is a great editor and honestly I think anything extra in IntelliJ could probably be added as a plugin to VSCode anyway. But I have used Jetbrains technical support when something wasn't working in the editor how I expected (when I was trying to cross-compile a Go program from Linux to Windows) and their response was fantastic. Others in my team use Pycharm for their Python scripts and this is based on IntelliJ so the similarity is useful too.
Yeah the VSCode extension marktplace is amazing! It's the reason I chose to go with it, you name it and they have an extension for it :D
 
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"So I'll take a look at a language either out of general interest because it's getting popular and I want to see what the fuss is about or due to a genuine need" - This is pretty much it and I think a lot of people learn Python first nowadays and don't really 'need' another language because it does nearly everything most people will need coding for, so unless you have a love for coding (like people do with natural languages), you're unlikely to move away unless you have a requirement - for work or performance.

I'm a dabbler, so love to look at different things in all aspects, including coding - it's nice to know what each one excels at and get a feel for each and try to specialise in one or two.
Yeah this makes sense to me - moving from python isn't needed so I don't. I do consider myself a lover of coding, but I opt for learning other tech or libraries or whatever else over learning a new language every time. The field is so broad it's overwhelming at times
 
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