If you could go back, would you code?

[simong1993]

I was at an event today and got talking about what we do. When it came to me, I listed all the languages I know, and someone asked 'why so many?' It got me thinking... I started coding to chase the money, but now I do it out of love.

Curious if others had similar experiences or completely different ones. Did your relationship with coding change over time? And if you never learned, do you regret it or feel like you dodged a bullet?

 

[JosiahMaybe]

In my case it is something like started for fun, eventually making it to being a profession. I know too many already if there is such a thing, no? All this time, now it is to be productive and help people. X E.

 

[EkBass]

'why so many?'

To be honest, that is bit silly question in my opinion.

Code is code. People would be better off thinking about logic, algorithms, mathematics, solution models...language is just a tool to get the results.

I started with BASIC back at 80s. If I remember right, Spectravideo 328 was my first computer. Then Spectrvideo 728 and from there I moved to PC world. So I skipped Commodore 64/Amiga somehow.

I staid on BASIC with PC world for a while. GW-Basic & QBasic. Then Pascal, C, php, js, Java, C++, python....Im not master of many, but I survive with most of common languages. Basicly JS is the one I think Im good at this date. Python I do not like, but it is the #1 tool with machine learning so had to study it too 😀 Pascal, C...used them but forgot so much because not in every day use.

 

[JimmysNetwork]

I was at an event today and got talking about what we do. When it came to me, I listed all the languages I know, and someone asked 'why so many?' It got me thinking... I started coding to chase the money, but now I do it out of love.

Curious if others had similar experiences or completely different ones. Did your relationship with coding change over time? And if you never learned, do you regret it or feel like you dodged a bullet?

Good question!

I think that I would still code. I enjoy the complexity of it, and learning new things. I think I would do it a little differently but nonetheless I would still write code.

I started with VB.NET back in the day. From there, I moved onto C#, & C++ (messed around with it but not very advanced. Over the years I have dabbled with Python, Ruby, Pascal, Java, and of course web langauges: PHP, JS, etc.

 

[simong1993]

By the sounds of it im in the wrong crowds 😅 Ive had two friends this year already give up codeing, one left a well paid job to stack shelves.

I think i need to mix things up a bit, websites are so so boring but machine learning looks fun. Anyone dabbled in machine learning yet?

 

[ratwolf]

To be honest, that is bit silly question in my opinion.

Code is code. People would be better off thinking about logic, algorithms, mathematics, solution models...language is just a tool to get the results.

I started with BASIC back at 80s. If I remember right, Spectravideo 328 was my first computer. Then Spectrvideo 728 and from there I moved to PC world. So I skipped Commodore 64/Amiga somehow.

I staid on BASIC with PC world for a while. GW-Basic & QBasic. Then Pascal, C, php, js, Java, C++, python....Im not master of many, but I survive with most of common languages. Basicly JS is the one I think Im good at this date. Python I do not like, but it is the #1 tool with machine learning so had to study it too 😀 Pascal, C...used them but forgot so much because not in every day use

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I was at an event today and got talking about what we do. When it came to me, I listed all the languages I know, and someone asked 'why so many?' It got me thinking... I started coding to chase the money, but now I do it out of love.

Curious if others had similar experiences or completely different ones. Did your relationship with coding change over time? And if you never learned, do you regret it or feel like you

Programming languages are essentially extensions of human language—but specifically crafted to be unambiguous and precise, something natural language struggles with. Where you can say “Put that there” in English and rely on context, a computer needs crystal-clear instructions like move(item, location) with defined parameters. Different programming languages are comparable to dialects as a metaphor. They’re all trying to express similar logical structures—like loops, conditionals, data manipulation—but each has its own syntax, style, and culture (e.g. Python’s emphasis on readability vs. C’s focus on control). Some are better suited for specific domains, just like dialects or registers in human language.