Go deep on one language or get comfortable in three?
I keep getting contradictory advice on this. Half the internet says specialists get hired, the other half says the good engineers are the ones who can pick anything up in a week.
I'm about two years in. Decent at Python, can stumble through JS. Do I push Python until I'd honestly call myself strong at it, or is breadth the thing that actually matters at the 3-5 year mark?
Curious what people further along would tell their two-years-in self.
3 comments
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AnonymousAnon Slightly different angle: nobody is hiring you for the language. They're hiring you because you can be trusted with a problem.
Go deep enough in one thing that you've been burned by it in production. Having an opinion about why something is the way it is, because you lived through it breaking, is the bit that reads as senior. Language count doesn't.
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AnonymousAnon Six years in. Depth first, but specifically the depth that transfers.
Going deep on Python taught me about memory, concurrency, and how error handling actually works. Picking up Go after that was a few weeks of syntax. If I'd spent those same two years skimming three languages I'd have ended up with three shallow copies of the same beginner knowledge.