Your Second Language Is The Hardest
Mike posted a link to a rant about computer languages. I was just recently having this argument about whether to use SQL queries or do the work inline in the high level language (Java in my case). The conclusion was pretty much, “when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” One quote from the rant matches perfectly:
But what we wound up with was a bunch of entry-level programmers all around the world who know one language, whichever one it is, and they don’t want to switch. Switching languages: the second one is your hardest. Because the first one was hard, and you think the second one’s going to be that bad, and that you wasted the entire investment you put into learning the first one.
So, by and large, programmers – you know, the rank-and-file – they pretty much pick a language and they stay with it for their entire career.
Admittedly SQL v Java isn’t really a language issue, but I have seen this problem over and over again. One of my first clients was willing to blow two months of time for the entire dev team to have them switch from VB6 to C#, and the team wasn’t willing. They really did have that block of thinking that learning a new language was hard, not realizing that the vast majority of the skill-set transfers over.