> It's very rare that any programmer switches computer languages.

Or is it?

I regularly use six different languages of three paradigms and various abstraction levels, and this doesn't count DSLs nor Turing-complete tools like make. Of my colleagues from current job, half of the more experienced set write in at least three languages as well. Of the team from my previous job, all of them are polyglots. And of course none of us started with all the languages, we picked them up as needed and wanted.

I'm 19, I started out with Java, I switched to JavaScript for some time, I move on to Python for which most of my projects exist in and sometimes I use C when the job counts for it. I'm also a pretty big fan of PHP and a few other technologies that are very nice.

To recap this has been my life as a programmer: Java -> JavaScript -> PHP -> Python/C/Assembly

This dream that most people have made up about programmers not switching languages is a dream. I switch whenever one language can do a task better then another. I don't get caught up in "best language" fights.

Yeah but you're just getting started. Talk to me after you've been paid to be a python developer for 20 years or whatever and tell me how interested you are in learning a new language.

I play with a lot of languages but I've invested a lot of time into learning python and getting a nice python workflow going. It would take a lot for me to switch to another primary first language.

I work at a tech company that's been around since the 90s and the guys that were writing perl and java in the 90s are still writing perl and java. You'd have to drag them kicking and screaming into using a different language.

Yeah I can use several languages (C,C++,python,go,rust,x64,perl,scala,etc...) But I always envision starting a project in C or C-like C++ because I learned it first and after decades I know that language inside and out and my brain's "workflow" and my actual tool setup and personal libraries means I can crank working solutions out extremely quickly.

I pick the best tool for the job. I'm using pything because right now I'm in a python shop. I'd like to go back to Java though as pythons asyncio is insane. The only reason I'm using pyhton is because the people inheriting my code will only know python.

What may look like "bah humbug I'll use X because I like it" may just be picking a language on concerns not limited to features. Looking at social concerns is important as well. Who is maintaining your code after you're gone? Company tooling for certain languages? Will I get fired for using it (AI winter)?

Lots of big questions

That's definitely not true. I've had the pleasure of working with many colleagues that have, and (since good Scala engineers are thin on the ground) my company will often hire good engineers who're interested in working with Scala. Heck - I myself have picked up Scala and Rust in the past couple of years.

> It's very rare that any programmer switches computer languages.

Do you have any data to support this claim?

Not even a little bit true.

I don't know scheme & I have this thing...

It crosses boundaries.