Re: Scripting Language Biases: The Tech-Sector's New Menace?

[Oberon]

> I like having the freedom to choose the *best* tool for the job, without being forced away from using a scripting language because of a code shop's unfounded belief that C++ is 'Holier Than Thou, Perl/Ruby/Python et. al.'

Well, IME you will plenty of this in the workforce, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. Oh, I can't deny that you will almost certainly find your share of managers who force people to program in a certain language just because it's their favorite, but remember that choice of technology (by which I mean to encompass general architecture, data storage, operating system, and bunch of other things as well as programming language) is usually a major decision for a company. And, in most cases, it should be. It's short-sighted for a company to let an individual pick how to implement a solution that they may have to support, maintain, and enhance for years to come. So in many cases the programming language (and a lot of other things) is going to be chosen for you before the project ever starts.

OTOH, you may run into many cases where the point is to get the job done, and the choice of programming language isn't a big deal. For instance, the sales team needs some numbers pulled out of the database and jammed into a spreadsheet: they don't care if you use Acess and VB, or DBI and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel as long as they get their numbers. In these cases, you do get to make your pick, and it may impact how others view your performance (hopefully for the better <s>).

My experience has been maybe 60/40 with the slight edge going to having the language chosen for me. (YMMV, naturally.) Don't get bummed about those, though. Try to look at them as opportunities to learn new things (even if what you learn are very good reasons why you never want to use X again), and wait for the other ones to come along.

HTH.