Once I was told: the programming language is secondary. What did he mean?

Question

Programming

Once I was told by an experienced programmer: "Programming language is secondary!"
What did he mean? If you study some kind of base, then you can program in any language, having learned only the syntax? So I didn't understand.

Answer 1

He meant that in general, all programming languages ​​are the same everywhere there are variables, conditional statements and cycles (transition procedures in the code).

Answer 2

I disagree, this is true only within certain areas, when switching from one tool to a similar one.
A good enterprise developer will not become a good game developer in a short time, and vice versa. Their knowledge is too different, only a very tiny common base.

Answer 3

This is a really difficult question, right? Well, imagine "War and Peace" by Tolstoy. From the fact that the work will be translated into the Ethiopian dialect, the plot will not become different.
If you can write an algorithm / logic for processing a request - how to describe this algorithm in a programming language is a question of syntax.

Answer 4

A programming language is just a tool in software development, and one of the tools. Software development also includes such activities as: development and writing of technical specifications / requirements, development planning, architecture design, research (of other tools, knowledge areas, implementation opportunities, etc.), task management, team or team management (developers, engineers, administrators, testers, etc.) and many other different types of activities.

Answer 5

Meaning:
Algorithms, paradigms, patterns, etc. are important.
Studying for a long time.
But it does not depend on the language.
The syntax of the language, by comparison, is simple and learns quickly.
The author of these lines started programming in Go 40 minutes after getting acquainted with the syntax.
Started programming in Dart 2 days after learning the syntax.
(PS: of course, not from scratch, but with a base of 20 languages ​​behind him - most of the common programming languages ​​are very similar)

Answer 6

It's like learning any language of people from different countries and cultures.
It doesn't matter what language you speak - the main thing is to be a good person.
And in this case - a good programmer.

Answer 7

The answer is often both right and wrong. Everything depends on the context.
The bottom line is that the languages ​​themselves can be divided into different categories or groups. By supported paradigms, by types of typing, by tasks for which it was developed, by different criteria. And here, within these groups, languages ​​are not so important. Experience, technology stack, etc. are more important.
And all sorts of disputes about whether the countdown should start 0 or 1, exceptions or return codes, what quotes, whether there are pointers, and so on, become irrelevant.
There is a technology that allows you to solve the problem. A number of languages ​​are attached to the technology.
Moving from one language group to another can be very difficult. So you can't do it. Many tasks

Answer 8

This is a really difficult question, right?

difficult for my level

+
Specially found:
( searched in the blog (?) "Aleksey Nedorya about programming and not only")
I understand where the legs grow from the decisions made ...

Back to the main point: I can program in any language, because I'm not programming in a language.
Several clarifying questions at once:
•Is this common? It seems to me that no. It seems to me that most programmers program in one language (multiple languages). It's weird to me, sort of like tying sticks to your legs to keep your knees from bending. After all, "... in Spanish with God, French with friends, German with enemies, Italian with the female sex ...".
•What do I program? I have an exact and useless answer: "in the lexicon of programming". Remember the anecdote about a lost helicopter that flies up to a skyscraper with a poster: “Where are we?” In response, after some fuss, a response poster is put up in the skyscraper window: “You are in a helicopter!” This is the same exact and useless answer as about the “programming lexicon”. If you try to answer anyway, the answer will be something like this: I initially think and do development in fairly general terms, which I then translate into a specific programming language and specific libraries / components / frameworks ...
•Why do I program like this? Here my answer is quite reasonable: I am a compiler, with experience in developing compilers from different languages ​​and for different platforms. I can see through the haze and syntactic sugar. I understand the roots of the decisions made by language designers. Plus, I studied the history of computers and programming languages.
What interesting conclusions can we draw from these questions/answers:
•I will not focus on what is obvious to me and I think that it is not so obvious to many that IT training should include the history of programming and, of course, several fundamentally different programming languages, for example, such a trinity: Smalltalk, Forth, Oberon and plus to them Scratch. And then those languages ​​that are now in vogue. I do not insist on these languages, these are just my personal preferences and an expression of respect for their authors / developers.