Cool Beans

This title came from my misreading of Are you a language wonk?, a blog article about building a language. Sounds really cool, but I currently have no interest in creating my own language. The topic brought to mind a discussion I had with a very sharp former Cal student. He stated to all the newb programmers in the team, "Good programmers are language agnostic."

This got me to thinking about all the different religious battles I've witnessed (and been in) about what the best programming language is for the task at hand. Without delving into heuristics, bias, and conventions, here are a few things I think support mht's claim:

•  It is likely much easier for younger minds to switch-task and switch-context often.
• Having the ABC's in place, i.e. the theory (versus learning only by projects that require a certain job to be done) helps one be more platform-agnostic.
• We will, under stress or deadline, always resort to the path of least resistance. In programming, this is the path that we know best, the one where we are most practiced. (This is why it's good to regularly practice outside one's own comfort zone.)
• Learning on the job (also known as "experience") is not a substitute for personal interest and personal development in computer science.
• Mastery takes 10,000 hours. But master one language, and there is collateral benefit to other languages.
  
• Writing lots of code is the only way to mastery.

So think about your job. Are you tied to a single way of thinking/doing? Do you have strong opinions of what is "the best" without having fully understood the alternative languages? These are signs you are still on a monk's path to mastery, and would benefit from some agnosticism.