I often see many fellow software engineers learning new programming languages every now and then, in the hope that they are increasing their "marketability". They seem to think that the more programming languages they know, the better. C, C++, Java, Javascript, Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, Scala, C#… the list goes on and on. These chaps are the first to get swayed by PR of companies marketing these languages (Microsoft for C# and .NET being a prime example). Hell, I talk as if I have been a saint, no, even I used to be in this – "Run to learn the latest language" club.
But over time, I have figured out that learning a language is never accomplished without using it in and out, in all sorts of ways, in all complexities, in various projects. What’s the average length of a code example in a book? Roughly 100 lines. And what’s the average size of code bases? 1000s and 1000s of lines. Unless you use the language to create something, you are not using the language at all. After all, a programming language is just a means to an end. It’s a tool in your hand to create an application, a service, something concrete and tangible.
Having come over to the Java world 2.5 years back, I have this habit of looking back on the code that I had doled out when I was new, and compare it with the code that I churn today. I find such a huge difference. The code that I produced 2.5 years back, is down right laughable in some places. Being at Sun, I was able to work with some very very smart people and hone my skills as a programmer (there is still a huge scope for improvement, as my recent experiences in the NetBeans land have told me). The code reviews have taught me a lot and continue to. I have been fortunate enough to work with some real wizards of design and Java platform and I am always in awe of such people and their ability to assimilate complexity and I try always to study their approach to problem solving. It gives you lots of pearls of wisdom and improves you as a programmer.
Even after this, when I feel that I write much better code than I used to, there is still a long long way to go for me in the world of Java. I still don’t know the little things which one gets to know when he is aware of the Java Language Specification. I still haven’t really decompiled a Java class, and tried to understand the byte code. I still am baffled by the whole area of memory management. I haven’t ever done a performance analysis or improved performance of code written by a different programmer. Never used NIO, still need to go slow when dealing with multi threading…. the list goes on and on. As Bharath Ravikumar (my former colleague at N1 SPS development team) rightly pointed out when I discussed this with him, it’s a matter of spending time gathering these experiences. I should try and work on all sorts of things in Java, and when your day job cannot satisfy such a quest, it’s best to turn to open source to satisfy your creative hunger.
You can make out the difference between someone who has just learnt the language and someone who has made better use of the time to work on projects in that language.
Now some readers may say that knowing just Java is not good enough, some languages are much better suited for certain applications. I totally agree. But, knowing a low level language (C), a middle level language (Java) and a dynamic language thoroughly, should be good enough for most, if not all, applications.
