A lot of language concepts are shared and abstract. It’s not hard to know many languages proficiently.

I do agree a lot of people over estimate how much they know, but I work with multiple people who know at least 5 languages well.

For me myself, only counting things I’ve shipped at scale, I’d know C, C++, Swift, JavaScript, Python, Rust, MSL, HLSL, GLSL, MEL. There’s enough in common between them that I think it’s quite doable.

> A lot of language concepts are shared and abstract. It’s not hard to know many languages proficiently.

Every language has thousands of papercuts. It is hard to know many languages proficiently beyond surface syntax level, period.

> I’d know C, C++, Swift, JavaScript, Python, Rust, MSL, HLSL, GLSL, MEL

Shipped !== know. I've touched dozens of languages over my career and every time I've had my ass kicked by some esoteric knowledge of specific quirk in std of %lang%. We have a different definition of "know".

Now you’re just shifting the goalpost.

You initially said beyond a surface level and now you’re talking about esoteric quirks.

Pick one. Of course nobody has the same definition as you if you’re shifting the line and simultaneously not defining what you mean.

You don’t need to know every aspect of a languages corners to be proficient in it. If that were true, there’s only a handful of people on this planet who’d be proficient in a single language let alone multiple.

> If that were true, there’s only a handful of people on this planet who’d be proficient in a single language let alone multiple.

This was indeed my point from the start.

I’m just trying to understand what your bar is for “knowing a language”

Is there a language you’d feel comfortable saying you know every single aspect of, without exception? Down to every compiler and implementation quirk?

Yes.

When you work in enterprise consulting, it suffices to know a language good enough to deliver.

It is common practice to be thrown at random projects regardless of the programming project.

What is valued is the soft skills, and the ability to swim when thrown into the cold water, no matter how.

Yes it kind of sucks, however the Pandora box is long open and only an implosion of the capitalist enterprise culture would fix it.

Sure, I can "swim when thrown into the cold water", but you have to be a masochist to like that kind of job. It sucks. I won't do it if I don't have to, and luckily I don't have to.

It pays better than the alternatives and some freedom moving between technologies, which tend to be product development with an expiration date, until the company gets acquired or decides to offshore the team.

Contrary to product companies you also get to jump technologies without having an HR department sending the application into the garbage because one doesn't tick all the boxes on a specific stack.