>This article has an idea of what a "Better Developer" is, which is kind of like a True Scotsman that must eat Haggis (or not!).
Nope. It's not even about being a "better developer". It's about being (and becoming) a master developer.
>If you are hired as a developer you may be useful to have a "smorgasbord" of experiences, depending on the role.
Then that company doesn't need a master, but just a generalist that can wear many hats with some competence.
>Someone who has only used C++ but 'gone deep' might be less useful here.
Which is neither here, nor there. The advice is how to become a master programmer (e.g. in C++), not how to become useful in a company that needs devs to tackle many roles.
You can’t ever be a master if you worked for the whole life in the same programming language doing the same thing.
You will be a narrow-sighted, maybe even very good, C++ developer that thinks to be a master.
A master has to have a huge amount of experience in a lot of different problems, domains and programming languages.
Otherwise he is just a specialised plumber, it won’t have the wide experience needed to engineer any kind of system.
You’ll never be a master because you are missing a lot of solutions, paradigms and techniques that are common in other languages and that you will never learn staying forever in the same language.
Also I would like to see how you can become a master in web development using C++.
You will always be castrated compared to someone else that has a much vaster experience with multiple languages and domains.
I think I can support this notion with something a little more concrete. I program C++ (13 yrs) and I learned javascript and web dev 8 years ago. don't consider myself a master at either. But, having broad coverage over and aptitude in both of these realms has had a huge impact on my ability to make an impact in the real world, working at a robotics company that heavily leverages these technologies. There are large rifts between teams that form due to the relative scarcity of "cross-pollinated" contributors.
I think that Linus Torvalds is a master of operating system development, even though he's done all his work in C. And I'm pretty sure that he doesn't care about ever being a master in web development (just as most web developers are probably not interested in becoming kernel developers).
Nope. It's not even about being a "better developer". It's about being (and becoming) a master developer.
>If you are hired as a developer you may be useful to have a "smorgasbord" of experiences, depending on the role.
Then that company doesn't need a master, but just a generalist that can wear many hats with some competence.
>Someone who has only used C++ but 'gone deep' might be less useful here.
Which is neither here, nor there. The advice is how to become a master programmer (e.g. in C++), not how to become useful in a company that needs devs to tackle many roles.