Junior programmers will often ask, “Which language should I use?”, “Which programming language is the best?”, and when they discover this new hip programming language that’s meant to solve all of their scaling problems, they get in your face and mock you for not using it for every single task. They will write blog posts titled “X language for Y programmers” in hopes of converting the masses to their newfound toy.

Smug senior programmers will laugh at the junior programmers and say that you should learn a great many different languages to expand your horizons. A single language cannot possibly suffice in this day and age. Each language has its own set of libraries, each is better suited for a particular task. Learning new languages will make you a better developer overall. Plus, marketing yourself as an X language developer limits your choice of employer.

Business people will have yet another approach. Their product is obviously written in some language or another so they need developer who can speak that language. Their platform is growing like crazy so they put up job posts screaming “X language developer needed!”. This creates a perceived demand for a certain kind of developer. Developer will start to feel the need to learn this newly popular technology and start by reading a “X language for Y programmers” post and thus completing the circle.