increasing productivity - mastering a language vs. selecting efficient tools

Question

I'm looking for advice from experienced developers on this question.

In my work there's a need for a lot of one-off code. It's tempting to just dip into the right python/perl library calls to do these little tasks as quickly as possible.

I used to be of the philosophy of - "use most efficient tool for the task". However, I'm afraid that over time, this means that I won't have a deeper experience and expertise, so recently I've been forcing myself to use C++ (w/ Boost and STL) for everything, even if I could do the task in python or perl much more quickly. I'm hoping that in the long run, this will make me a more productive developer. I hope to reach a level of familiarity that I can do things in C++ as quickly as I can in python (and also have the practice to work on bigger projects that would require C++).

Is this a good strategy towards long-term productivity and deeper skills? Or am I unnecessarily wasting time / torturing myself?

Answer 1

Or am I unnecessarily wasting time / torturing myself?

That's what you are probably doing.

A woodworker doesn't spend all day using a chisel to cut out shapes instead of a saw, does he? Programming languages are tools just like libraries and development environments. Writing a big C++ program to perform a job best handled by perl or grep is often a waste of time.

But, don't go overboard on the "best tool for a job" religion. A tool your are very familiar with and enjoy using may well exceed it's drawbacks compared to a "proper" tool that you don't enjoy using.

Answer 2

I thinks devs often find the grass greener on the other side. There isn't much that can't be theoretically be accomplished in either environment. But, the strengths of C++ become clearer when dealing with performance-intensive problems, while the strengths of scripting become clearer when dealing with breadth-first implementation. At some point, the productivity curves meet, and switchover to C++ makes its case.

Also, C++ is the lingua franca of development for historical reasons, and obviously C++ talks best with C++, so you're likely to encounter it frequently.

Finally, learning both sides is great for perspective, which generally makes one a more versatile and informed developer. So, I think improving your C++ would be a very productive thing for you, and learning something like Python (or Perl, etc) is a great thing for C++ developers to know.

Answer 3

Using many languages and tools increase the ability of a programmer to think beyond a particular language. If someone sticks to C alone, that person will code strings every time there is a need for a string. Not bad, but counter-productive.
Let me write from a different perspective. I have seen that computer science/engineering students turned programmers approach coding a solution different than others. They do not think of what is available in the language, but start from a generic solution and try to find ways to code it in a language. This is the concept of design before coding.
I believe your question can be answered from the same perspective. Using many different languages and tools to solve a problem enables one to realize there are ways to solve a problem beyond the traditional way, and one tries to find such constructs/libraries in every language. I believe this is an invaluable quality of a programmer that can only be built by working in different languages.

Answer 4

The only way to truly master a language is to use it regularly on real projects. Forcing yourself to use a language for one-offs is great when you are enthusiastic about it, but the novelty usually wears off before you really achieve mastery. Not that just being "familiar" with a language isn't useful in and of itself.

Answer 5

"use most efficient tool for the task" - don't completely throw away this principle. You won't be able to achieve the same level of efficiency in C++ as in Python and Perl, simply because they are high-level languages. But there will be reasons you will want to choose C++ in spite of development efficiency.

But, by all means, do choose C++ over the others for the sake of practicing it. Getting familiar with it is a good start, and won't be a waste of time. But note that there will be limitations to how proficient you can get by writing the C++ equivalent of a script. You'll eventually need to move beyond that to actually get proficient.