On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 12:41:44 +0200
Wouter Verhelst  wrote:

> On 26/02/2019 01:02, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Feb 2019 19:20:50 +0200

> > or you have some learning
> > to do.
>
> If you're starting a job and *then* start learning the language, you're
> wasting your employer's time.

 Not necessarily - I have had to learn languages on the job before,
twice it was even the language I was hired to write in (C when I was an
experienced BCPL programmer (among many other languages) and C programmers
were rare, years later it was PHP).

> And not knowing the language that's in use locally when you begin the
> job seems like a waste of everyone's time.
>
> If you see a job posting for "C programmer" and you come along and say
> "I'm not really a C programmer, but I've been doing a lot of BASIC these
> past few years so I'm definitely a programmer", then you're not doing it
> right...

 Quite so - OTOH when you have extensive experience in many
languages and the one used in house is similar to ones you know and your
other skills are in demand then picking up a new language on the job may
(and has for me) be perfectly acceptable. Often I have picked up a language
in one job because there was a sudden need for someone to do so and I could
do it quickly and then used it as the main language in a later job.

 General rules are always wrong - including this one :)

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