> Why do some people seem to be relatively at ease with a variety of > languages and some people become language fanatics? I don't think this is a dichotomy. In my experience, almost _all_ people who can program are highly opinionated with respect to programming languages. (Whether they use several or just one, are fanatics or not.) My personal theory about this phenomenon says that it happens because languages are so conrete and restricted in scope that one can understand at least many of their pros and cons at least reasonably well. This is in contrast to most other topics in programming, such as program design, which tend to be more abstract and fairly limitless. In other words: In an area (namely, programming) that is frustratingly complex and difficult, people just love to talk about some part of it that they understand well (or think they do). If the explanation is correct, it has an interesting consequence: Whenever people become really opinionated about some thing Q in programming, some progress has probably been made, because the reason why they become opinionated is that they (think they) understand Q. Lutz Lutz Prechelt http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/ | Whenever you Institut f. Programmstrukturen & Datenorganisation | complicate things, Universitaet Karlsruhe; 76128 Karlsruhe; Germany | they get (Phone: +49/721/608-4068, FAX: +49/721/608-7343) | less simple. >>> Ever had negative research results? http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/fnr <<<
