Development Language Families and Leveraging Them

As we continue our overview of IT and development languages, in particular, we examine the idea of development language families.  This includes how those can impact our ability to quickly adapt to a new environment.

Modern Development Language Families

The good news about this concept is that the most popular modern languages fall into only a few categories of families.  Thus, once you have even one or two under your belt, it can be a short trip to ramp up to a new language or environment.  The programming language concepts you see in any given language will tend to be consistent.  Better yet, even the syntax will start to become familiar.

Improve Your Career in Small Steps

The key to using these traits to become a better developer (and further your career) is to understand the development language families that exist.  These families provide a path of complementary ideas and syntax that can make your advancement through languages less work.  For example, The jump from Java to C# (in either direction) is not as substantial as one might think.  In fact, a solid developer in one of these languages can arguably start in a maintenance role on the other language with a negligible ramp-up time. This leads to more options available.  That is, once you know the languages that are a small step from those you already know.  This can lead to more job opportunities with your current employer or others.