C++ experience is quickly getting less relevant over time
I hear this often on HN and elsewhere, if I'd had to guess I'd also say it's true. But is there any proper evidence to support that? And in any case, it will probably still take decades before C++ will be gone. Maybe you could as well say: specialize in C++ now, in 20 years specialized companies will be begging on their knees for you to come work for them to keep their legacy C+++ stack working :]
don't specialize in programming languages.
Depending on the language you do need some level of specialization/mastering though else you might end up being writing very sub-optimal or even bad code in some languages. I'd say learning how to learn a programming language also pays off. Have you seen the amounts of SO questions for C from people who haven't reached a certain level yet? Their programs continuously crash or don't work as expected. Not necessarily because their intent is incorrect or they are bad programmers/engineers but more often because they lack proper understanding of C. Have you tried approaching Matlab the same way as any other language? Oops, there goes the performance. Working in Labview? It might look like it's easy (hey, all you gotta do is draw wires, right) but good luck building a medium sized application with it if you don't know at least some of the ins and outs. Now you might say 'if you encounter such problems you need to pick a better language' but that is just not how it works.
I hear this often on HN and elsewhere, if I'd had to guess I'd also say it's true. But is there any proper evidence to support that? And in any case, it will probably still take decades before C++ will be gone. Maybe you could as well say: specialize in C++ now, in 20 years specialized companies will be begging on their knees for you to come work for them to keep their legacy C+++ stack working :]
don't specialize in programming languages.
Depending on the language you do need some level of specialization/mastering though else you might end up being writing very sub-optimal or even bad code in some languages. I'd say learning how to learn a programming language also pays off. Have you seen the amounts of SO questions for C from people who haven't reached a certain level yet? Their programs continuously crash or don't work as expected. Not necessarily because their intent is incorrect or they are bad programmers/engineers but more often because they lack proper understanding of C. Have you tried approaching Matlab the same way as any other language? Oops, there goes the performance. Working in Labview? It might look like it's easy (hey, all you gotta do is draw wires, right) but good luck building a medium sized application with it if you don't know at least some of the ins and outs. Now you might say 'if you encounter such problems you need to pick a better language' but that is just not how it works.