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Comment by earpwald | Hacker News Reader

It depends on what you want to do and what you want to become. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power, and the more you know, the stronger your skills can become. As a developer myself, I would say that my skills are independent of the language I'm coding in. For example I currently work in .Net, but the skills I know are easily transferable to other languages (Java, Node etc).

It's important to remember that PHP is not going to be suitable for every situation that you develop in and knowing what else is out there, and having a basic knowledge in how the other languages work and their pros vs cons means that you can chose the right solution at the right time. Ultimately if you want to be a PHP developer I would recommend really focusing and learning that language first and then looking further afield. After all its better to be a master of one language, with the ability to pick up new skills as needed in others, than be an amateur at 10.

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I agree the coding basic remains same across all languages.And I have not yet come across any project that cannot be done in PHP(except for Mobile Apps).

Seeing as you want to grow as a programmer then I would encourage you to first excel in PHP. That means spending time looking at in the in-depth ways of doing things, but more importantly the best way to do it. Look at best practices for PHP, how to improve your coding style and to work on learning how best to refactor and improve older code within systems to be performant and secure.

I would also encourage you to look into the pros and cons of PHP, as there are situations where some other language is better. Sure you can do it in PHP anyway most of the time, but you should always look for the best solution, so using PHP may cost you more time or risk security or some aspect for a specific task. I don't know what you do and PHP could be perfect for everything you do, but knowing limitations is a good thing to know anyway. Once your happy with your level of knowledge in PHP that's when I would start looking at other languages, as you never know what you'll like. I've always been fond of java/.net stuff, but I recently tried Node and I love it, so you may find other things that you enjoy coding in.

I agree sometimes PHP may cost more time or risk for a secific task.But still will other languages help? Example : A complex task in PHP takes 4 hours and it can be done in Node.js in 20 min.But do I really need to spend 20 or 30 Hours learning Node.js and then complete that task?

I agree with chintan39... I've been working in java and php for more than 10 years. As its grown I've found I could do just about anything in it. Even before Zend I was building objects in it.

To me the programming language is nothing but a tool to accomplish a task. The concepts of programming, the use of objects, models and data is the art of programming, the "design", the language is the tools and materials, the "wood and hammers". These can make it more elegant and high performance for the task the programming will be accomplishing.

Also, as someone who pretty much used PHP and Js exclusively before going for a CS degree, I've found that i've learned a lot about the languages I already knew by studying the way other languages behaved.

Nice point here "The concepts of programming, the use of objects, models and data is the art of programming, the "design", the language is the tools and materials, the "wood and hammers""

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