How well do i have to know a programming language before i can

>>57092983
FizzBuzz

>>57092983
When you sufficiently know most of the language features.

>>57093033
What are "language features"? Most languages are the same shit and you choose your language based on what you want to make, not because it's your favorite.

>>57092983
Once some one is willing to pay you to program with it.

Arrays, memory management, standard library.
Know some algorithms that let you solve stuff.

>>57093098
Once you know how to deal with pointers and memory allocation without worries, you can pretty much say you learned C.

>>57093098
>What are "language features"?
Exactly what it sounds like. The particular features the language has.
Syntax, standard library functions, semantics of whatever, etc. Also note that the lack of certain features can be considered a feature.
>Most languages are the same shit
You sound like someone who has maybe dabbles in 2 or 3 languages, all C-like, and not to any real depth. Yes, imperative programming is usually pretty similar, but there is much more to programming languages than that.

>>57093127
You can learn C up to pointers in a day. You can't use that knowledge for anything

>>57093098
No. Most languages aren't the same shit.
I mean, you can do almost anything on almost any language, but some problems are more easily solved (less time wasted) in some languages than in others. There's also the whole imperative/declarative - structured/OO/functional paradigm stuff.

Like, you can compute numbers very easily in FORTRAN. Or deal with statistics with R. But I doubt you can do it with Prolog without using more than 10x the same timeframe.

Some example: Chris Sawyer programmed Railroad Tycoon (I think that was it), _almost_ completely in Assembly. 99%, in fact. He could go for the extra 1%, but that would take him much longer, so he just used C in that 1%. I think it was something about interfacing with DirectX.

The point is, you can do almost anything in any language. However, some of them take much longer than others to solve the same problem.

>>57093204
>Railroad Tycoon (I think that was it)
It was RollerCoaster Tycoon.

>>57093173
I wonder how many people reached Chapter 2 of K&R and realized all that stuff in Chapter 1 could be done with some library function, much easier.
I remember when I took some course in Java, and the teacher explicitly forbid us from using libraries to connect to a database. He wanted us to learn how to do everything on the lowest level possible.
Guess it ends up paying.

>>57093227
Ah, that's it. Thanks.
Also, the development of Rollercoaster Tycoon made me realize that you can't just allocate more programmers to code something faster. A very good programmer is worth 10 good programmers.

>>57093173
Fuck pointers.

>>57093098
The basics are the same, but not the details. Also, using the features in an idiomatically correct way is important, to really know a language.

Some languages like C++ and lisp are incredibly complex, with an absolutely huge set of languages features, that most users will never need. Nobody's expects you to know all those to really know those languages.

Languages like C, python, go and ruby have many libraries, but the core of the languages are actually small enough to comprehend in a week of study. Assuming you already know how to program in general. Comprehending isn't the same as knowing of course.

>>57092983
When you stop googling "how to do ...". It's fine if you have to look through the standard library though.