It’s common for people to be sceptical of software developers with varied coding experience. We’re used to seeing, “5 years C# experience” on the CV in front of us, so when we see a CV that says: “2 years of Ruby, 1 year of Python and 2 years of Java”, we might be concerned that the person doesn’t have the depth of experience we need. Although this reaction is natural, it’s misguided.
”If it doesn’t matter whether the programmer you’re considering has deep knowledge of the language your application uses, what does?“
The person with the second CV could be a better developer on a C# project than your language expert, despite having little or no C# experience. Let’s not confuse them with a developer who happens to know a few languages. I’m talking about a particular kind of developer with varied experience and a good grasp of engineering fundamentals. The polyglot programmer.