Post #4251069

2026-07-30 19:31 UTC

@matt@toot.cafe I understand at a certain point I am just railing against things being the way they are, but like, having that understanding of, "this type of languages does things this way, because it's trying to do this, and so it's probably going to be good for doing that." So I can structure the learning. Would be good. On the other hand, if the answer is something like, "well, c is really hard, but you can do basically anything with it so you'll probably end up there, but Python is simpler and has really good docs and you can still do a lot with it. So that could be a good starting point!" Just says to me "come back to the serious stuff in five years when you're a real engineer" which I know isn't actually how it is but you get what I mean. It is demoralizing.

Replies (1)

@prism@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 19:33

@matt@toot.cafe Part of why I never moved forward is I couldn't decide what language I should learn, for a few reasons: - Some languages stick around because they are better at doing different things - Other languages do not stick around because they suck and get superseded by new languages - Some languages really suck, but stick around anyway - Some languages are really good but are uncommon so learning them doesn't help you get a job as something more generalized - Most languages have really weird sintax about certain things - The language is evolving (usually in a better direction, but still) making your ground truth obsolete after a few years. So really, you shouldn't learn one language, you should learn three or four to be on the safe side. That all seemed like entirely too much work.

Open ##4251068