5 years later I'm still wondering what programming language I should specialize in. Fml.

New user here. Apologies for unknown transgressions.

@anudroid no worries, dude.
Welcome to devRant!

From now 5 years later you'll know which programming language is the best candidate for the following 5 years later you should specialize at.
Good luck.

Depending on your outfit, there isn't one.

JavaScript. Join the dark side young squire 😉

Why do you want to specialize in the first place?

That's fine if you work at big companies, but in small companies, being able to program in several languages can be highly valued.

I sure know my company wouldn't be the same if I wasn't able to use 5 languages in the same day (not counting html/css there)

yeh what @Fradow said. I think nowadays we all become product specialists.

Its inevitable when you work on the same product solving non trivial problems for a period of time.

I think its extremely brittle to be a language or stack specialist.

I also remember Silverlight experts, Flash experts, or <insert dead once popular technology> experts.

I really REALLY don't want to be one of them.

Just because a language/framework is popular today and seems it cannot stop to exist doesn't mean it will still exist in 5 years, as the past showed us.

@Fradow with respect to achieving workable mastery over a particular language, where would you draw the line? I mean basics in any language could be picked up within a short period and problems could be solved in multiple ways - which may not be as efficient as solving the same problems after knowing the language internals. Do you think it's ok to have code from the former approach go into production?

@anudroid Let's ask the question the other way: is it ok for the business to hold off on pushing perfectly working code into production because the developer is not sure he is using the best way to develop?

Pretty sure the answer will always be a resounding NO.

I personaly pushed code to prod 1 or 2 months after first learning the framework and most of the language. I sure as hell made sure to follow all best practice and triple-checked everything, though, an experienced dev would have taken 10x less time.

On the other hand, a good business practice is to allocate time to improve the existing code (that's a subset of refactoring). That's when you migrate your old naive code to a better, more elegant code. Otherwise, the business run into the risk of having a huge pile of old, naive code that no one wants to touch, and which is heavily resistant to change.

There is an adage: leave the code in a better state that you found it.

@Fradow Thanks for your input. That's helpful.

Multiple. To be more specific, specialize in a few languages that fit the job you want. Companies want polyglot devs, not single language devs