>>> This says far, far more about you than about the people around you.
Not necessarily. In my MS past I also had to defend my VB.Net experience in interviews, being perceived as a low-threshold toy language. And peer pressure matters in your network: how much reach-out would you get, as self described VB wizard or a SQL master?
Fashion rules, as PL topics on HN show regularly. A PL survey [1] was linked from an article some hours ago; it shows interesting answers: just compare the language list of "I know many people who use this language" to "I would use this language on my resumee"
That said, of course you are right: If you stay out of the fashion circuit and produce some value with tools you know, then nothing else matters...
Not necessarily. In my MS past I also had to defend my VB.Net experience in interviews, being perceived as a low-threshold toy language. And peer pressure matters in your network: how much reach-out would you get, as self described VB wizard or a SQL master?
Fashion rules, as PL topics on HN show regularly. A PL survey [1] was linked from an article some hours ago; it shows interesting answers: just compare the language list of "I know many people who use this language" to "I would use this language on my resumee"
That said, of course you are right: If you stay out of the fashion circuit and produce some value with tools you know, then nothing else matters...
[1] http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/viz...