How many years does it take to ramp up on Linux or windows...I mean the source code?
I hate mangers who think like you, they think developers are basically interchangeable without specialties that took substantial time acquire. As if our investments were always in the six month range!?! How about 5 or 10 years of deep experience?
> I hate mangers who think like you, they think developers are basically interchangeable without specialties that took substantial time acquire.
I hate managers (and other programmers, but managers are more problematic) who think that languages are specialty of programmers rather than a tool. "C#" isn't a programming specialty any more than a particular model of chef's knife is a culinary specialty.
Web Application development might be a specialty. OS development might be a specialty. Java is a tool.
C# is not a specialty by itself, but ASP.net is! WPF? WCF? Some of these libraries are very deep. You perhaps have a chance if the dev is familiar with a similar domain stack.
Knowing Scala is not just scala + scala.lang, but rather it involves knowing and mastering a bunch of libraries, as well as some heavy frameworks (lift or play?).
Anyone (manager or programmer) who thinks of languages in isolation of stacks and platforms is probably an academic or incoherent.
Languages are not tools, they are merely starting points to something much more complex and involved. "Can I learn Haskell in 6 months?" Sure! Can "I master whatever library/stack that I'm learning Haskell for?" It depends very much on what that is and my past experience, and the answer is probably not!
I was able to learn Clojure in half an hour. How? Easy - I knew Scheme already, so the only thing I had to pick up was a bunch of reader macros, like [ or { or :.
I was able to learn Smalltalk in a day. It has stupidly simple syntax - one of the simplest in existence! - and there are objects everywhere - and we all just know objects, right?
That's stupid.
As I noted above, knowing a language and knowing how to use a language are two different things. To really master a language usage you have to learn and internalize a whole bunch of things, from which the language itself is the smallest bit.
Comments
Six months is an estimate - it obviously depends on what you're working on. The two years I'd be willing to bet on.
How many years does it take to ramp up on Linux or windows...I mean the source code?
I hate mangers who think like you, they think developers are basically interchangeable without specialties that took substantial time acquire. As if our investments were always in the six month range!?! How about 5 or 10 years of deep experience?
> I hate mangers who think like you, they think developers are basically interchangeable without specialties that took substantial time acquire.
I hate managers (and other programmers, but managers are more problematic) who think that languages are specialty of programmers rather than a tool. "C#" isn't a programming specialty any more than a particular model of chef's knife is a culinary specialty.
Web Application development might be a specialty. OS development might be a specialty. Java is a tool.
C# is not a specialty by itself, but ASP.net is! WPF? WCF? Some of these libraries are very deep. You perhaps have a chance if the dev is familiar with a similar domain stack.
Knowing Scala is not just scala + scala.lang, but rather it involves knowing and mastering a bunch of libraries, as well as some heavy frameworks (lift or play?).
Anyone (manager or programmer) who thinks of languages in isolation of stacks and platforms is probably an academic or incoherent.
Languages are not tools, they are merely starting points to something much more complex and involved. "Can I learn Haskell in 6 months?" Sure! Can "I master whatever library/stack that I'm learning Haskell for?" It depends very much on what that is and my past experience, and the answer is probably not!
I was able to learn Clojure in half an hour. How? Easy - I knew Scheme already, so the only thing I had to pick up was a bunch of reader macros, like [ or { or :.
I was able to learn Smalltalk in a day. It has stupidly simple syntax - one of the simplest in existence! - and there are objects everywhere - and we all just know objects, right?
That's stupid.
As I noted above, knowing a language and knowing how to use a language are two different things. To really master a language usage you have to learn and internalize a whole bunch of things, from which the language itself is the smallest bit.