If you pigeonhole yourself as a Python Programmer or a PHP Programmer or a Ruby Programmer you've failed as a programmer.
A programmer programs. You should have the confidence to pick the right tools for the job and, if necessary, learn a new language if that's the right thing to do.
Likewise, you should have the confidence in your team regardless of their gender or language background. A good programmer is a good programmer. Period.
I second that as well. Strong programming skills transfer across languages and the more different languages you know, the stronger programmer you will be in all of them. Also, different programming paradigms are emphasized in different languages (functional, OOP, declarative, imperative are the simplest examples...). Knowing these different languages will expose you to these different paradigms and that's very valuable, I think.
The general points against people trying to establish a rigid hierarchy of languages make a lot of sense - people make a lot of dumb generalizations about programming languages.
I think the article makes a lot of bad claims and arguments though in the service of an overall point that is valid, so it was frustrating to read.
Sometimes the technical differences between languages are actually significant - even though many can be used for multiple purposes, it doesn't mean they can be used for all purposes or have equivalent properties.
I also think there's a bit of a strawman there: "he community and libraries, rather than the technical features, are most important in determining the languages people choose". It's true that the libraries, community and conventions around a language are as important as the language itself, but I think people's statements about the programming language usually mean the whole complex of things around it, rather than just the core language + standard libraries.
I'm also not sure why they resorted to using random internet comments - some of which seem to be entirely tongue in cheek - to support their argument. It doesn't really detract from the points, but it's distracting.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 19.9 ms ] threadA programmer programs. You should have the confidence to pick the right tools for the job and, if necessary, learn a new language if that's the right thing to do.
Likewise, you should have the confidence in your team regardless of their gender or language background. A good programmer is a good programmer. Period.
I think the article makes a lot of bad claims and arguments though in the service of an overall point that is valid, so it was frustrating to read.
Sometimes the technical differences between languages are actually significant - even though many can be used for multiple purposes, it doesn't mean they can be used for all purposes or have equivalent properties.
I also think there's a bit of a strawman there: "he community and libraries, rather than the technical features, are most important in determining the languages people choose". It's true that the libraries, community and conventions around a language are as important as the language itself, but I think people's statements about the programming language usually mean the whole complex of things around it, rather than just the core language + standard libraries.
I'm also not sure why they resorted to using random internet comments - some of which seem to be entirely tongue in cheek - to support their argument. It doesn't really detract from the points, but it's distracting.