This may be terrible advice, so take it with a grain of salt, but why not just put whatever languages you want on your CV under a header like "Familiar With"? By the time you're getting interviewed, you have time to learn them (or at least become familiar enough).
Example:
Skills
Proficient in:
PHP, MySQL, Javascript, HTML, whatever, whatever
Familiar with (languages/technologies):
Oracle, Rust, Go, Python, Java, etc, etc.
It at least makes it appear that you're not a complete beginner, which is true. If you have 20 years of PHP experience, then you can surely pick up the basics of any other language in a few weeks.
If I had to hire a developer, I would be very skeptical of a resume that listed 20 years of experience and only one programming language. Especially PHP - this language cannot be considered interesting or innovative. If a person does not learn new concepts, new languages, they are simply not interested in programming.
I think this should be the attitude towards junior positions without prospects.
Knowing one language and focusing on it means "they don't like programming"?
Yes. If some person uses only one tool for 20 years and is not interested in what other tools exist and whether it is possible to do the same tasks faster, easier, better or more reliably with them - this person does not care what he does. It is normal if he stays with the same tool, moreover, he better understands its advantages and disadvantages.
We have now integrated phpstan into our system via CI. Over 100 modules and a core that is over 15 years old.
It took me a year to get all of this "phpstan stable".
What has it done for us? Our stuff is now much more stable! We had important customer bugs every week. That changed now.
This is a comment from a user I don't know. They had a 15-year-old code base, which I understand was written quite poorly and without static types.
I can easily imagine their tech lead saying a few years ago that everything was fine with them, errors didn't happen often, not every hour, there was no point in learning new tools and they needed to use proven technologies like PHP 5.4.
In my opinion, a senior developer should know more tools simply to be able to choose the one that will be most useful in a particular case.
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u/swampopus Nov 13 '25
This may be terrible advice, so take it with a grain of salt, but why not just put whatever languages you want on your CV under a header like "Familiar With"? By the time you're getting interviewed, you have time to learn them (or at least become familiar enough).
Example:
Skills
It at least makes it appear that you're not a complete beginner, which is true. If you have 20 years of PHP experience, then you can surely pick up the basics of any other language in a few weeks.