Why companies are looking for coding skills in a particular programming language, instead of looking for understanding of the set of abstract ideas behind the programming languages?
When someone understands the big ideas behind, then picking up one particular language’s syntax and semantics is pretty straightforward. Given that you already know the concepts, pairing the language’s syntax with a familiar concept is the remaining work you need to put into.
The other way around, if you know only one or two languages with a limited set of paradigms and concepts behind, it is much harder to pick up UNDERSTANDING of other languages…
Programming languages can come and go, and you will be in big trouble if you lack understanding…
References
- Why Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs matters, by senior lecturer Brian Harvey UCB
- Scheme vs. Python, by senior lecturer Brian Harvey UCB
Imre's blog 