I managed like 30 people in IT outosurcing company, about a hundred passed through during my career. We had the exact same discussion many times. As a CEO/owner in that time, I completely understand your point and it's far from incorrect. But we also gladly spent money and time on educating people in different ways. NOT during a payed/deadlined project of course. But there are always opportunities! Do it then. It's hard to see the benefit of this fast. You have to spent years on the job to distinguish "wide" from "focused" and what each brings you. In simple and straightforward projects "wide" guys were always slower but would catch up fast if you gave them a few similar projects and usually outperform later. But as a manager, you wouldn't waste a resource like that on it. You would give him unusual, problematic client/project because there, "focused" ones would get lost, frustrate themselves and the client and end up being slower. Over years, "focused" ones end up being "senior developers" and sometimes "architects" in one or two fields. A point of frustration in the company for every stack change. "Wide" ones reach "architects" level sooner and more often, and more than occasionally they become heads of development or teams. Don't get me wrong, as the owner, I love and need both. But as a friend or even father, I insist on going "wide". It will always pay off in the long run.
So, don't just switch between React and Nextjs, between VSCode and Itellij. Switch between Vim and VSCode, between Linux and Windows, desktop and web, Rust and Javascript. Let's go even more extreme... use your left hand for a day to cut food, teach your left leg to use the break in the car (this one NOT IN THE TRAFFIC!!!!), try writing a small program on paper... goal is not to be good or better in any of this. The goal is to try, have fun, and learn different perspectives.
And yes, search for "5 monkeys and a shower" story online and read it if you haven't already (EDit: uh, forgot a very important note: as said, this is a "story" and not a real "experiment" and is most probably completely a fiction! However, it is interesting and I refer to it as I have witnessed similar behaviour with people (groups of), not monekys :)
Daily work includes:
Kotlin, Java, Groovy, Python, JavaScript. (Did some C#,PHP,Ruby before)
Spring and Micronaut, some Vue just to check some stuff up and MapBox.
Neo4j, PostgreSQL, MongoDB. (Decided to drop Azure Cosmos DB)
VSCode, Sublime, IntelliJ and a dozen of DB UIs be it web or custom desktop UI.
Linux and Windows and different tools on it.
Messaging systems like Apache Pulsar.
I think that's quite enough for daily work. Playing with Go, Scala, and Elixir would introduce some new stuff but not much. Also following NAND-to-Tetris is quite fun to catch up on some stuff missing from the past BUT.
The only thing here to actually introduce some changes would be to learn how to program quantum computers and how they work. There's a free playground provided by IBM I think.
So no I don't agree that Vim would introduce any benefit to anyone. Different shortcuts, different way to use it, same goal to achieve, write code. Same goes for rest. Once you pass certain line there's no true benefit. You have some but is it really worth time ?
Great stuff! So what do you say when some young programmer tells you that he is focused on Javscript/React and that he is twice faster than you becuase of that? :)
Vim? It's not about Vim, it's about trying modal editors, and about focusing on keyboard and less on the mouse. Just another small thing on the list. But time and list is different for everybody. Nobody can get the list done, ever. But certainly wouldn't call it useless.
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I managed like 30 people in IT outosurcing company, about a hundred passed through during my career. We had the exact same discussion many times. As a CEO/owner in that time, I completely understand your point and it's far from incorrect. But we also gladly spent money and time on educating people in different ways. NOT during a payed/deadlined project of course. But there are always opportunities! Do it then. It's hard to see the benefit of this fast. You have to spent years on the job to distinguish "wide" from "focused" and what each brings you. In simple and straightforward projects "wide" guys were always slower but would catch up fast if you gave them a few similar projects and usually outperform later. But as a manager, you wouldn't waste a resource like that on it. You would give him unusual, problematic client/project because there, "focused" ones would get lost, frustrate themselves and the client and end up being slower. Over years, "focused" ones end up being "senior developers" and sometimes "architects" in one or two fields. A point of frustration in the company for every stack change. "Wide" ones reach "architects" level sooner and more often, and more than occasionally they become heads of development or teams. Don't get me wrong, as the owner, I love and need both. But as a friend or even father, I insist on going "wide". It will always pay off in the long run.
So, don't just switch between React and Nextjs, between VSCode and Itellij. Switch between Vim and VSCode, between Linux and Windows, desktop and web, Rust and Javascript. Let's go even more extreme... use your left hand for a day to cut food, teach your left leg to use the break in the car (this one NOT IN THE TRAFFIC!!!!), try writing a small program on paper... goal is not to be good or better in any of this. The goal is to try, have fun, and learn different perspectives.
And yes, search for "5 monkeys and a shower" story online and read it if you haven't already (EDit: uh, forgot a very important note: as said, this is a "story" and not a real "experiment" and is most probably completely a fiction! However, it is interesting and I refer to it as I have witnessed similar behaviour with people (groups of), not monekys :)
Daily work includes:
Kotlin, Java, Groovy, Python, JavaScript. (Did some C#,PHP,Ruby before)
Spring and Micronaut, some Vue just to check some stuff up and MapBox.
Neo4j, PostgreSQL, MongoDB. (Decided to drop Azure Cosmos DB)
VSCode, Sublime, IntelliJ and a dozen of DB UIs be it web or custom desktop UI.
Linux and Windows and different tools on it.
Messaging systems like Apache Pulsar.
I think that's quite enough for daily work. Playing with Go, Scala, and Elixir would introduce some new stuff but not much. Also following NAND-to-Tetris is quite fun to catch up on some stuff missing from the past BUT.
The only thing here to actually introduce some changes would be to learn how to program quantum computers and how they work. There's a free playground provided by IBM I think.
So no I don't agree that Vim would introduce any benefit to anyone. Different shortcuts, different way to use it, same goal to achieve, write code. Same goes for rest. Once you pass certain line there's no true benefit. You have some but is it really worth time ?
Great stuff! So what do you say when some young programmer tells you that he is focused on Javscript/React and that he is twice faster than you becuase of that? :)
Vim? It's not about Vim, it's about trying modal editors, and about focusing on keyboard and less on the mouse. Just another small thing on the list. But time and list is different for everybody. Nobody can get the list done, ever. But certainly wouldn't call it useless.