Comment Re:Symptom of thinking vocabulary is the key (Score 3, Insightful) 242
Then, he will have very hard time getting proficient in, let's say, Mathematica.
Why do you assume that? I would agree that it is hard to imagine anyone with a strong technical background only knowing Fortran in this day and age but, should such an individual exist, I would not see it as a barrier to hiring them. During my time as a student and a postdoc I taught myself Matlab, Perl, C, C++, Python, Alpha CPU assembler, SQL, ROOT and an interesting variation of BASIC which ran on an old Caviar CAMAC crate controller from the late 1980s! Learning a new language when you already know how to program probably takes a day for basic proficiency and a bit longer to get fully up to speed. It's far more important that you have someone who understands the science and has a strong technical background: if you have that the language is easy to add, if it isn't then you do not have someone with a strong technical background.