Is it important to learn only one programming language?

Question

IT education

Good day. I am 37 years old. Not so long ago I entered the IT faculty. We have a lecturer at the department - a practitioner. He confidently tells all of us that we need to take a very responsible approach to the choice of language. Because, he explains, it's like a woman alone and for life (yes, I'm old-fashioned).
He says that it's just not possible to know even 2 languages ​​well.
But nevertheless, we are learning several in parallel (4 to be exact).
Actually, I did not notice any complications, but on the contrary, I noticed that even each language is easier to learn, everything is the same in them. only the details and scope are different, in some places not so dramatically. C# and JS seemed to be very similar in general.
But I can't figure out the region. I like both the one and the other and the third.
So, have you had a similar experience? Is it important to focus on just one language? How to choose ? Or can you always change, and even so that even the salary does not decrease?

Answer 1

He confidently tells all of us that we need to take a very responsible approach to the choice of language.

90% of the world's population...

Because, he explains, it's like a woman alone and for life (yes, I'm old-fashioned).

monogamy is a myth
https://smallbusinessprogramming.com/learn-at-leas...

Where did “learn at least one new language every year” come from?
As best as I can tell, this idea was popularized by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas in their book The Pragmatic Programmer (which is a great book, by the way).
In a section on investing in your knowledge they wrote:
The quoted text was the first recommendation in list of things programmers can do to improve their knowledge. And it's a reasonable recommendation in the context of the book.
However, over the years, people have stripped that context away and turned it into something like this: “Learn at least one new language every year or you're not a good programmer.”

First, you need to learn one PL very well
Study so that you don’t have any problems go through the debugger into the cs code or into the kernel code and understand with google what is happening
Then, with any regularity, add a new PL to your knowledge base, studying it to the very crusts

Answer 2

Each language has a bunch of pitfalls, its own troubles, etc. Plus, each comes with a set of environments - from libraries, standard and not so, to frameworks and stacks, as well as ide, debuggers, profilers, testing systems, etc.
And all this is constantly evolving.
Therefore, the teacher is right and wrong at the same time. You can only study well what you constantly deal with. Knowing the general principles and being a good developer is possible for a large set of languages.
Another important point is that experienced guys say that it is important which language was learned first. Dynamic or statically typed (strict). This defines the approach to development for life. Then people change the language, but the principles and approaches remain the same.

Answer 3

No no and one more time no. Or maybe you misunderstood it. At the university, the first thing to learn is to program. Knowing how to "program" and knowing all the technical nuances, it will not be difficult for you to learn "any language".
Programming languages ​​also do not differ from ordinary languages ​​that we deal with in everyday life, because it's just a banal syntax with its own twists. If you once learned, for example, Spanish and even actively spoke it - what do you think will happen to it in 5-10 years if you speak it once a month for a minute? Or not speak at all. It's exactly the same with PL, they are being finalized and they change to some extent, but they also tend to be forgotten :)
Как правило те, кто полагается конкретно на синтаксис 1го языка и заучивают именно его, а не саму концептию и принципы программирования - то те люди и испытывают огромные сложности при переходе на другие стеки технологий.
Банальный пример на моей работе: Пол года на ЯП "х". Узнается, что нужен модуль "хх", которого нету на языке "х", писать самому? или написать часть проекте на ЯП "у", и вот ты уже пишешь на ЯП "у", переключаясь назад на "х". И так за полтора года только в одном проекте пришлось поработать с жавой, пайтоном, плюсами, JSom и еще одним внутренним языком.
Вывод? Советую учиться так, как-будто через месяц, вам придется учить и ПОНИМАТЬ что-то новое.