Programming is like martial arts; you can learn the concepts in a relatively short period of time, but it takes a lifetime to master. I’ve mastered neither.

But I’ve come to realize that it’s counterproductive to be dogmatic about languages and platforms. It’s more useful to be able to look at a piece of code in whatever language and be able to figure out what it does.

One of Bruce Lee’s motivations in creating his own form of martial art (Jeet Kune Do) was that traditional “styles” were inflexible and not adaptable to real-life situations. He said that “the worst disease of the human mind is to be for or against.”

From that, he applied Occam’s Razor and kept what was useful, discarded what wasn’t.

Development can be viewed the same way. There are a million ways to accomplish the same goal. The art is in making things as simple as possible, but no simpler.