Range for Software Developers
The term Range defines the breadth of knowledge in an industry. As software developers we often value depth of knowledge but breadth of knowledge is even more valuable in the long run.
The range of experience allows developers to think about the problem in different ways. It also allows us to makes references between different context, technologies and programming languages. As developers we must work towards maximizing our range so we can look at the problem in different ways.
I started software development more than a decade ago using GW Basic, C and then .NET. Now I have developed in Swift, Objective-C, Kotlin, Java, JavaScript, Dart, Python, Ruby etc. The range of languages and frameworks enable us to think about the problem in variety of ways and find the best possible solution. When I was working with Swift I always wondered why they don’t have custom attributes like C#. Now in Swift 5.X custom attributes are available as propertyWrappers. When working with Swift I wondered why we can’t create ranges like in Ruby language, now we can. My knowledge of ReactJS helped me learn Flutter which helped me learn SwiftUI. My knowledge of NodeJS and Express helped me learn Vapor and Kitura.
Even if your primary language is not X it is always a good idea to look and learn a new language or framework because you never know what ideas you can learn from a language which can be applied at your work.
