[ale] Any language (wuz: Assembly Language?)

[Michael B. Trausch]

On 10/27/2013 11:26 AM, Leam Hall wrote:
> Be the one that folks know "Hey, he does {web/os/financial/db} 
> programming and we need something done." If you build your reputation 
> in a certain domain then your ability to find work in that domain 
> becomes easier. There are millions of programming tasks that need 
> doing and a lot of them are funded. It becomes a matter of building 
> your cred and finding those tasks you are suited for. 

To take this one step further:  Ignore programming languages 
/completely/ and be a /programmer/.

What I mean by that is analgous to what some people mean by the 
difference between "writing in a language" and "programming into a 
langauge".

Anyone can write straight and unmaintainable code in any language.

Anyone can write elegant and maintainable code in (nearly) any language, 
assuming that the language is reasonable enough.

Anyone can fix things like PHP's problems by doing it differently. 
Facebook attempted to do so though they opted out of that and went for 
(yet another) VM approach instead.

If you know any three programming languages well, you can learn any 
other programming language pretty easily, discounting the standard 
library for that language (or environment).  Those aren't typically too 
hard to learn, though, as they all pretty much expose the same types of 
functionality.

If you can write an algorithm in C, and write that same algorithm in 
Python, BASIC or JavaScript, then you're a programmer and language no 
longer is relevant---the knowledge that you have in the domain of 
programming and the knowledge that you have in the real problem domain 
reigns supreme.

But the key here is that you need to know all the cogs in the system 
that you're working with.

When someone asks me if I'll take a project to implement $FOO, I tell 
them that I will get back to them on that if it is a $FOO that I'm not 
familiar with.  I take a week or two, depending on how long is required 
for me to do so, and then tell them if (a) I can take it, (b) I won't 
take it, or (c) I need more time.  Why?  Because everyone comes to me 
with different problems---sometimes /very/ different problems---and I 
refuse to take on work that would be better performed by someone else.  
*shrug*

     --- Mike

-- 

	Michael B. Trausch

President, *Naunet Corporation*
? (678) 287-0693 x130 or (855) NAUNET-1 x130
FAX: (678) 783-7843

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