Do you call yourself a Java developer or a .NET programmer? Do you think a carpenter calls himself a handsaw carpenter or a table saw carpenter or a belt sander carpenter? The point, if it is not obvious, is that you should not pigeon hole yourself into claiming that you’re only a one trick pony. Could you imagine a carpenter getting a job if they walked into contractor’s office and said “I use a hand saw really well but I’ve never really messed with this hammer stuff?” That carpenter would be laughed out of the office.
One thing some of the language evangelists forget is that a language, IDE, framework, OS and the hardware it all runs on are just tools. Humans advance by making tools and then making better tools. Imagine if we had stopped at the flint axe because the flint axe evangelists said that the flint axe was the best axe ever made. At that point it probably was but eventually we moved from the Stone Age to the Iron Age and the Steel Age and now you can buy nice steel axes at Home Depot for reasonable prices. Of course you can also buy a chain saw and save yourself a lot of hassle.
So what does this mean for you, the sophisticated computer programmer of today? It means that you should think of yourself as a programmer. It may be acceptable to think of yourself as web developer or enterprise software developer who is fluent in many of the tools of your trade. Don’t get stuck in the rut of your current tool of choice. VB6 programmers learned this lesson all too (or should have) well when Microsoft decided that VB as they knew it was no good and needed to be replaced. Goodbye VB6, COM+, COM, etc, hello .NET, good bye knowledge, hello training classes.
A good craftsman uses the best tools for the job. If a new tool comes along that can make a job faster, easier or results in better end products, you can bet that it would be adopted. However there are always the Luddites that believe nothing new can be better. So the advice is to stay agile and keep learning. If you catch yourself bashing another technology without having used it, maybe you should reconsider after all right now you could be out hunting bison with a stone axe, instead of sitting in a nice climate controlled office sipping lattes and reading this excellent article.