Having "no interest" in learning other languages is a serious bad mark against your brother, I'm afraid. He might be a "very good" programmer, but he'll never be great - never be a "hacker", by pg's definition.
I don't know any hacker who doesn't have an intense, irrepressible interest to learn new stuff - languages, frameworks, whatever. I also don't know a single hacker who hasn't learned well over half a dozen languages to a proficient level. And no, CSS and AJAX don't count (unless the Javascript is taken to a scary level). Sounds like your brother is a designer with some coding skills, not technical co-founder material.
Re:Technical co-founder needed for Studeous
by jamongkad on Wednesday July 16, 2008 @08:15PM
(#248094)
I personally don't use ColdFusion but I guess there are some CF haters around these parts. I guess that why you were downmodded. But please as hackers we love certain bits of technology and swear by them or perhaps swear at them lol(PHP comes to mind). I understand you as my brother also loves the ActionScript family of languages. And does not have any interest learning anything else.
Re:Technical co-founder needed for Studeous
by scorpioxy on Thursday July 17, 2008 @03:35AM
(#248313)
It was probably downmodded because of the "no interest" in learning anything else.
Any programmer worth his/her salt should be always learning newer technologies that might be useful to him/her. Having a favorite is different than not wanting to learn anything else.
My brother is a very good ColdFusion programmer. He got his start in the language because it was what I was programming with at the time. (Don't forget, around '99 when I got my start, there was Perl, ASP and Coldfusion as serious contenders.)
I ask him, "Why don't you give PHP or Rails a whirl?" "No interest." And so he focuses his effort in refining his ColdFusion skillset. He does Ajax and does CSS design with the best of them.