You're a Programmer, not a Linguist

I often encourage my students to be more open-minded, to think of a programming language as a tool. The main job is not to acquaint ourselves with a programming language...

When you begin your journey as a programmer, you'd most likely have a primary programming language of choice. For example, most Data Analysts would begin with Python, Web Frontend Developers with JavaScript, Android Developers with Java/Kotlin, iOS Developers with Objective-C/Swift, and so on. It's even more so once you choose a go-to framework or library: Laravel for PHP, Flutter for Dart, Flask for Python, Gin for Go, or React for JavaScript. At this point, programmers tend to be more used to a certain language than others, so we get tagged as “JavaScript Developer,” “Python Programmer,” or “Rust Developer.” Then you would generally see this in how we passionately argue and defend our language of choice as the best programming language ever designed.

I often encourage my students to be more open-minded, to think of a programming language as a tool. The main job is not to acquaint ourselves with a programming language but to write a program that does what it’s meant to do, and sometimes, better than it should. Adopting this mindset could be helpful for beginner programmers and even for “Senior ‘Language’ Developer." Does it mean we shouldn’t have an area of specification or a favorite programming language? Absolutely not! I have a favorite language depending on a specific task. We just need to realize that the whole world of programming does not revolve around a single programming language or a specific area. Therefore, it is important for us to see the greater picture, to understand common programming concepts beyond one language of choice.

This brings us back to why I encourage beginners to learn TypeScript instead of JavaScript. There are several of these concepts (like type hinting and polymorphism) that are abstracted away in JavaScript but are made available in TypeScript. The earlier we have a foundation in these things, the better programmers we tend to become.

Thanks for reading. I’d like to know what you think or if you have any question.

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