> Programming languages can't all be picked up that quickly, since semantics may differ a lot.
The second day with my new employer I was tasked with writing an analysis project in a language I'd never even heard of before joining. Within two weeks, I was writing code in that language every bit as good as my coworkers'.
Your statement may hold true for people who know one or two languages (like most CS graduates these days), but once you know a wide array of languages (my list is Python, C and C++, OCaml and SML, Lisp and Scheme, Perl, and the semantics but not the libraries of Lua/Ruby/Java/Erlang/Haskell) picking up a new language really isn't a challenge at all: the semantics almost certainly fit somewhere in the space of the languages you know, and what small bits do not are easily learned.
(As a side note, that's why I still put OCaml, Erlang, and Lisp on my resume; not that I imagine very many employers would be interested in working in those languages, but because I want them to know that whatever they do their work in likely lies within the range of my existing semantic knowledge.)
The second day with my new employer I was tasked with writing an analysis project in a language I'd never even heard of before joining. Within two weeks, I was writing code in that language every bit as good as my coworkers'.
Your statement may hold true for people who know one or two languages (like most CS graduates these days), but once you know a wide array of languages (my list is Python, C and C++, OCaml and SML, Lisp and Scheme, Perl, and the semantics but not the libraries of Lua/Ruby/Java/Erlang/Haskell) picking up a new language really isn't a challenge at all: the semantics almost certainly fit somewhere in the space of the languages you know, and what small bits do not are easily learned.
(As a side note, that's why I still put OCaml, Erlang, and Lisp on my resume; not that I imagine very many employers would be interested in working in those languages, but because I want them to know that whatever they do their work in likely lies within the range of my existing semantic knowledge.)