Most folks who say they "know" 12 languages barely can code in most of them.
From personal experience hiring programmers and dabbling in programming - the guy who devotes his life around being a Java programmer and grokking the entire ecosystem is far more effective at writing Java than the guy who is a stellar C guy who has been using Java for a year.
I think the "languages are just a tool! pick up the best one for the job!" trope is over evangelized. There are exceedingly few competent programmers who can pick up a language and be a true expert at it within a few months. Those guys are not who we're talking about in the article.
The more average programmer (e.g. guys who would let skills rust) is likely struggling with the basic concepts to begin with, much less picking up an entirely new syntax. These guys would take time measured years to get up to their same basic productivity as their first language.
From personal experience hiring programmers and dabbling in programming - the guy who devotes his life around being a Java programmer and grokking the entire ecosystem is far more effective at writing Java than the guy who is a stellar C guy who has been using Java for a year.
I think the "languages are just a tool! pick up the best one for the job!" trope is over evangelized. There are exceedingly few competent programmers who can pick up a language and be a true expert at it within a few months. Those guys are not who we're talking about in the article.
The more average programmer (e.g. guys who would let skills rust) is likely struggling with the basic concepts to begin with, much less picking up an entirely new syntax. These guys would take time measured years to get up to their same basic productivity as their first language.