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Developers are calling it quits on polyglot programming: Matt Asay, writing for TechRepublic.

Yes, but… (and this is a big but)

I don’t think it’s that developers are “calling it quits on polyglot programming”. I think what we’re seeing (and he touches on this toward the end) is that ultimately developers just want to be productive. Developers will dump Java for something like Groovy because it makes them more productive. (Ditto Scala; ditto Clojure; ditto Ruby; &c.) The Tim Bray quote is a big tell here to that point. It’s exciting to get the opportunity to learn new things; but it’s anxiety-provoking to walk around feeling like you’re expected to have deep knowledge of a hundred unrelated things.

This is what underpins the discussions around “back-end vs. front-end” developer and/or someone who is a “Java developer” vs. a “full-stack developer”. There’s a certain amount of breadth that you need, and ultimately you should stay curious and get out there and learn some new things, but you’ll also suffer if you never settle down for a second and go for depth on a chosen subject.

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