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0 pointsdanans7y ago0 comments

> My anecdotal experience says that 1) most programmers are monolingual,

This surprises me as I've never worked on a nontrivial system that's also a monolingual system.

There's nearly always another language to use to get the job done, whether for configuration, scripting/automation, or because backends and UIs are written in different languages, especially for internet-based software.

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dagw7y ago

There's nearly always another language to use to get the job done

Sure, but in most cases programmers spend most of their time only in one 'part' of the system and only really have to know the language that part of written. In general it doesn't matter if the back end server is written in Lisp, Java or APL, as long as it talks to my part of the system in the way it's supposed to.

danansOP7y ago

> in most cases programmers spend most of their time only in one 'part' of the system

Perhaps that's a reflection of the structure of the organizations they work in.

Anyways, the other cause of multilingualism is switching jobs, projects, or problem spaces. All three of those often involve a language switch.

tatami7y ago

Isn't most software rather trivial? Like in copying strings around.

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