I suppose my position is an outgrowth of my very first attempt to build an application. Every component that I took up and learned the 'right way' to build an application, everywhere I looked, and everything I read, was very counter to the way that the whole system was oriented. After banging my head for a while trying to just get things to work while still doing things 'the right way' I realized that the tools I was using were never designed for use in an optimal way. You don't need an optimal way when you're idea of producing something is simply to ramp up how many resources you have on a project. My personal project could never get to where it needed to be without superior tools. The fact that I've not given up on my own project is precisely the reason I have little motivation to go back to things like VB.net.

I'm not one who got on the programming ladder in College or Highschool, I don't necessarily have all the time or resources to become the grand horizontal polyglot I'd love to have the resources to become. The whole reason I choose Clojure is because I found myself at almost 30 years and two years into a project that I'd been squeezing out of any free-time I could get frustrated that the best advice I could get with all the presently 'accessible' 'entry-level' programming tools were constantly in contradiction with each other and obviously built far more with a large corporation in mind than for any lone, starting from scratch, developer wanna-be like myself, they gave lip service to it, but it wasn't there. I finally got stuff working and it'd break and the only way I could get the thing working was to delve into the bowels of visual studio and a bulk of the .net framework. I read some PG and saw the light.

So I started from scratch, did my homework and choose Clojure, that forced me down some other paths, none of which I regret, learning enough of Debian to be dangerous, plenty of time banging my head against lots of obstacles. But in all honesty they weren't really anything less accessible than the whole .NET jungle was. And when it all started to click I didn't feel like I was just stumbling into getting something to work. I actually felt like I had some idea of what was going on. I know I lack a lot. And if my saying that I'm somewhat adverse to learning CERTAIN languages alienates me from some then I suppose I'm okay with that as well. Because when I ran into problems with my old attempt at doing things 'right' with .NET and VB I eventually either restarted my project or just serendipitously got the thing working. Now when I trouble shoot my Clojure projects I know how to eventually find the answer regardless of whether or not I can get someone to help me with it.

I really do want to understand the fundamentals better. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be able to have the entire stack in my mind, heck I'd love to get down to assembly at some point. But my top priority, the whole reason I choose Clojure as my real starting point into programming is because I know what I want to build and I feel an urgency to get it built THAT is the only reason I'm, at present, limiting what I'm learning. I only have so much brain bandwidth and only so much time. My way of striking while the iron is hot is to stay, at present, focused on what I feel, is the right tool.

The reason I'd love a job in this should be obvious, if I can be working on Clojure (or Scala, or Erlang, or F# etc.) programming on the job then that would boost my capacity on my own personal project which is, after all, my whole reason for obtaining a passion in programming.

I don't have a lack of interest in learning other languages, with the caveat that I want to reinforce the whole driving force behind my becoming a hacker.