Have you ever wanted to delv into the fabulous world of computer programming? Do you desire the chance to write 1,000 lines of code with the hopes of one day never working again and being surrounded by beautiful women? This article is a great place to start.

One of the more common questions here is about which language to learn; even which implementation of which language.

If I interviewed someone who told me they knew language Z, but didn’t know language R too well, I wouldn’t mind. We could have the interview in language Z. But I’d press them a little bit about what they thought of language R. They should know at least a little about it; what it is good for, what it’s not good for, and so on. If they start ranting about how it was invented by an evil scientist who worked at a company that everyone hates, or that it “just sucks”, or other such nonsense, I can’t imagine the interview would last very long.

A professional developer isn’t concerned with language; they’re even less concerned with style in a particular language. They’re able to pick up a language pretty rapidly, since it’s just a different way to express the ideas they should already be very familiar with. As they gain practice, they’ll get better and more fluent. But if they spend the first couple of weeks learning different things, that’s no big deal.