A good hacker can pickup a new language quickly, maybe half hour, or 1 day, or three days for complex ones. But also usually with each language, comes a set of tools and practices, that take a bit more time to become proficient with, and are also necessary to reach a high levels of productivity.
Recruiters expectations varies on each market situation. In my experience, as a freelancer doing remote work, few if any hiring companies are willing to wait that time. You are mostly required to have demonstrable high quality concrete experience in the specific tools to be used.
Various factor are involved in this situation. Among these, one thing is that is difficult to identify good hackers. Also, hiring the wrong person can be very costly for a company.
Hackers have to send the right signals, to surpass these barriers. Some are lucky, and their careers give them the right opportunities. Others doesn't have that luck, and must put an "special" extra effort, to be able to advance and get these "best opportunities".
HN frowns on novelty accounts and bot posting, but if they were allowed I would write a bot to post this link whenever someone mentions learning a new language quickly:
I’m not saying that a good programmer cannot become productive in a new language quickly for some definition of “productive,” but it seems thee is more than meets the eye when it comes to learning a new programming language.
I used to write “Can write LISP in any language” on my resumé. Then I discovered that those who knew Lisp well were afraid that I couldn’t, and those who didn’t know Lisp well were afraid that I would.
I used the concept of "a good hacker". That is a loose definition, that may mean different things to different people. I consider a good hacker someone that has passed the commonly know 10.000 hours of programming experience, and who has studied and experienced various different programming paradigms.
So it is opportune to make the clarification, and I think that I agree with your comment.
Comments
A good hacker can pickup a new language quickly, maybe half hour, or 1 day, or three days for complex ones. But also usually with each language, comes a set of tools and practices, that take a bit more time to become proficient with, and are also necessary to reach a high levels of productivity.
Recruiters expectations varies on each market situation. In my experience, as a freelancer doing remote work, few if any hiring companies are willing to wait that time. You are mostly required to have demonstrable high quality concrete experience in the specific tools to be used.
Various factor are involved in this situation. Among these, one thing is that is difficult to identify good hackers. Also, hiring the wrong person can be very costly for a company.
Hackers have to send the right signals, to surpass these barriers. Some are lucky, and their careers give them the right opportunities. Others doesn't have that luck, and must put an "special" extra effort, to be able to advance and get these "best opportunities".
HN frowns on novelty accounts and bot posting, but if they were allowed I would write a bot to post this link whenever someone mentions learning a new language quickly:
http://norvig.com/21-days.html
I’m not saying that a good programmer cannot become productive in a new language quickly for some definition of “productive,” but it seems thee is more than meets the eye when it comes to learning a new programming language.
Comes back to the "you can write FORTRAN in any language" saying.
I used to write “Can write LISP in any language” on my resumé. Then I discovered that those who knew Lisp well were afraid that I couldn’t, and those who didn’t know Lisp well were afraid that I would.
I used the concept of "a good hacker". That is a loose definition, that may mean different things to different people. I consider a good hacker someone that has passed the commonly know 10.000 hours of programming experience, and who has studied and experienced various different programming paradigms.
So it is opportune to make the clarification, and I think that I agree with your comment.