A few weeks ago I carefully considered what I thought I knew and what I thought I didn't know, attempting to chart a course for myself. I found that so far I know a fair amount about the syntax of a few computer languages-- and not much else! Not much at all about any other piece of the process of developing software.
So I started putting together in my mind a list of some other tools I thought I needed in my toolbox: A powerful text editor, a revision control system, a debugger, a bugtracker, a profiler, etc. And then I began filling in the list with concrete tools, starting with emacs and git. For the computer language in my toolchain I chose python, which I reasoned would be simple enough to not distract me from learning the other tools, especially since I already knew the basics of its syntax.
I was entirely wrong! I greatly underestimated my distractability. Actually I've spent much of the past few weeks deeply immersed in python's grammar, captivated by it. I can still barely crawl around in emacs, and I've learned just enough git to get by, yet I could tell you all sorts of interesting facts about python's formal grammar that I'll probably never need to know.
So it's been occurring to me more and more what shiny objects languages are. They tempt you to look for your keys under the street lamp, hoping in vain that the solution to your problems is somewhere in that stark elegance, not in slogging through the muck of complexity.
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