Imagine a coder who has tried two coding languages and wants to try a third, but is afraid it’d be too hard to remember the syntax of three different languages.
How many languages should we master as coders? One? Two? 60?
Well, of course, in web development, it’s not that simple. We’re all at different stages in learning to program, and sometimes you do need more than one language to build what you want to build, so you can’t give an exact numerical answer. But here is some advice.
What is Mastering a Code Language?
Firstly, let’s clear one thing up.
When we say mastering, we mean mastering. We don’t mean doing a half-assed job of one tutorial before moving on to another language. That’s not mastering a language.
To master a language, you need three things:
- You need to know it inside out.
- More importantly, you need to have actually built multiple coding projects with that language.
- Finally, you should be ‘at home’ and comfortable writing in it. You should feel like you know your way around.
Specialize!
So now we know how to actually master a language, now the question is how many?
If you’ve been trying out a variety of languages, it’s pretty safe to say you haven’t mastered every one of them in the way defined above. You’re probably becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. So the solution is, decide what coding language to learn and master it!
So stop fooling around, think about what languages you enjoy the most, and what you want to get out of coding, and choose one language to specialize in.
When Should You Master More Than One Language?
So we’ve established that if you’ve just been fooling around, you should choose a single language to master and specialize in. But what if you have mastered a language?
Perhaps you have mastered a language, you’ve traveled to the far corners of that language and back, you’ve built more projects than you can remember, and you’re feeling bored.
This is when it becomes time to start on another language. And when you’ve mastered that one, start on a third one. Work on one at a time.
Think of code languages like spoken languages. You don’t learn them all at once – you learn one at a time, and only when you’ve mastered one do you move on to another.
What About Languages Requiring the Use of Other Languages?
Of course, sometimes it’s not that simple.
In the world of web development, it’s nearly impossible to work in one language only. There are so many languages intertwined in each other. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, PHP – it’s not uncommon to find websites that employ five languages or more.
That said, while you may need to use more than one language for your project, you should still choose just one to focus on. To build a PHP website, you need basic HTML and CSS, but those are easy languages to pick up, and you don’t need to focus on them. PHP is still the language to focus on.
However, just as HTML and CSS go hand-in-hand, the SQL language goes hand-in-hand with PHP, and you would be stupid to limit yourself to just PHP and no SQL. In this case, it’s fine to master both languages at once.
Don’t Be a Jack of All Trades
It’s better to be a master of one or two languages and know nothing about anything else, than to know a bit of everything but not enough.
So the key thing to take away from this article is that while the most important thing is simply not being a jack of all trades. As long as you’re not a jack of all trades, you’ll be fine.
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