John Salerno wrote: > It's a nice thought that a person can earn a living programming with > Python, which is fun enough to use just for its own sake. But for > someone like me (i.e. no programming experience) it's always a little > disheartening to see that most (if not all) job descriptions that ask > for Python still require some C/C++ or other language knowledge. I > suppose this isn't an issue if you studied CS in college, because you > would have been exposed to many languages. > > Well, the thing is, once you can program in one language you can pretty much move around to other languages pretty easily (unless they are twisted, but rarely have I been asked to use something crazy). At my job I've written about 30 lines of C code in the 2 years I've been here. The rest has been almost entirely Python. Occasionally other languages come up, you just kinda do what you need to on the fly or get a book when you get stuck. There's so many examples on the web you can go from zero to productive fairly quickly. Of course with anything it takes time to get good with a language, I'm not say you could be an expert but you should be able to look at some C examples and gather most of what you need to construct a simple program. From there hit your references up and go for it.
> But what if you are an expert Python program and have zero clue about > other languages? Can you still earn a living that way, or do most/all > companies require multiple language proficiency? > My team mates know strictly Python (and a little shell) and do just fine. I know very few programmers who truly only know a single language. In fact the fact that I know Python has gotten me calls from several recruiters recently. Seems like python is on the up and up. Anyhow, the longer you code the more languages you'll come into contact with. It just usually works out that way. Between school and work I've learned Python, Perl, C, C++, Fortran, and Java. I was only taught C, once I had those concepts down I found usually I just needed to learn the syntax. > (I suppose this isn't exactly a Python problem, either. I'm sure even > companies that don't use Python still use multiple languages. Maybe it > isn't a good idea to focus entirely on a single language, depending on > the job at hand.) > Be familiar with lots of tools, get good at the ones you feel will help you get the job done. No doubt you'll be most proficient in the one you need to use the most, but you'll always need to move around, its definitely a good job skill to have. -- Carl J. Van Arsdall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Build and Release MontaVista Software -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
