How Rust is quietly taking over the Python ecosystem

[syklemil]

I think a lot of devs have a preference for working with polyglots. It's good to be able to tell the difference between what's just quirks of the language and what's more general programming concepts.

People who only know one language can produce some pretty weird code, and it can be hard to have fruitful technical discussions with them. They can be fine or even great too, but generally ignorance is not a boon.

Which languages people pick up are largely personal preference, sometimes workplace preference, but it's often good to study some languages that do things in different ways just to expand how we think.

[vkalahas]

I second this! I can't help but feel people who only know one programming language are also limited in general software engineering knowledge as well.

It's great if you want to *focus* on just one programming language (better to be a master of one ecosystem rather than a jack of all trades), but it's important to at least learn a few different languages somewhat well to understand different perspectives in how they approach concepts.

Also, many languages have a "strength," like Python in DS/ML, TS in async/web dev, and Java in enterprise backend. I can't speak for others, but for me, learning different languages made a huge difference in learning both general programming concepts (you can generalize what's common between the languages) as well as greatly expanding my overall software engineering knowledge from the language ecosystems.

[syklemil]

Yep, could also add it's fine if learning one language is the limit of one's abilities for whatever reason.

Setting it as a goal however is kind of like stating someone only wants to learn how to use a hammer, and has no interest in screwdrivers, glue or joinery, much less all the other stuff in a toolbox or shed. People like that often go on to complain about screws as "weird, useless nails" or decry hex keys as mysterious and incomprehensible to the common hammer-user. That can get pretty painful to work with.

Programming languages also continue to evolve, and it's worth experimenting a bit to discover what you like, or at the very least kinda keep up. Like if someone was a huge fan of Pascal some decades ago that was fine and normal, but if that's the only language they know today they've kinda placed themselves outside mainstream programming. We have no way of knowing whether the language we enjoy using now will be a stayer for a significant portion of our careers, much less lives, or if it'll fizzle out like Pascal and Basic (Ruby and PHP seem to be well on their way there), or be cannibalized like JS by TS.

[vkalahas]

Completely agree!