a different question: can you earn a living with *just* python?

[Fuzzyman]

John Salerno wrote:
> It's a nice thought that a person can earn a living programming with
> Python, which is fun enough to use just for its own sake. But for
> someone like me (i.e. no programming experience) it's always a little
> disheartening to see that most (if not all) job descriptions that ask
> for Python still require some C/C++ or other language knowledge. I
> suppose this isn't an issue if you studied CS in college, because you
> would have been exposed to many languages.
>
> But what if you are an expert Python program and have zero clue about
> other languages? Can you still earn a living that way, or do most/all
> companies require multiple language proficiency?
>

When I started at Resolver Python was *almost* my only language
experience.

Ten years previously I had dabbled a bit with assembly language and
various flavours of basic. Whilst doing web stuff I dabbled with
Javascript, and I've also played around with a very little C.

I have no degree having dropped out of university.

Almost all my experience was teaching myself Python in two and a half
years of playing with it in my spare time. I learned enough in that
time to impress Resolver sufficiently to offer me a job (with about
thirty or so other applicants).

I now use a fair bit of C# at Resolver (which is ok), but I'm not what
you'd call 'proficient' in it. I'm still still monlingual really.

One of the things we've done at Resolver is use the PLY toolkit to
write a fairly extensive language parser (no compiler, just the parser
and a rewriter), and I think I've read widely enough to understand a
fair bit about programming language theory. I'm certainly going to
learn more - but it has almost all come through Python.

Fuzzyman
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml

> (I suppose this isn't exactly a Python problem, either. I'm sure even
> companies that don't use Python still use multiple languages. Maybe it
> isn't a good idea to focus entirely on a single language, depending on
> the job at hand.)