My wife is an "RSE" (research software engineer), she's an MD by training, but doing some programming for research. She's been in this role for about two years now, and she did maybe another two years of Python programming prior to that in a similar role.
She still doesn't feel comfortable with Python (or any language) and often needs guidance / help. Mostly because in this role, the amount of programming is really minuscule, and the expectation isn't that the programmer develops a useful application or library well-integrated into the larger ecosystem of applications or libraries. Rather it's that some research can sift through the data they've generated and publish on that.
The instances of "re-education" I was talking about were quite different: those were "programmer-first" people. In this capacity, they might write in a month more code than what what my wife wrote over the last four years, they are also expected to build a lot more complex (in terms of organization and integration) software.
I don't consider RSEs or similar roles to be professional programmers. These people typically have terminatory degrees in fields other than CS, but often no formal training in CS. They also rarely see their own goals in becoming as good of a programmer as they can, their evaluation is typically based on results that programming might help to bring about, but, in principle, isn't really necessary for. Sort of how you wouldn't call every programmer a "professional mathematician", even though writing programs is a kind of math, as is eg. checking out customers at the supermarket.
So, while someone like that might need years to adjust to a new language, OP seemed to have in mind professional good programmers. I think they even had another bullet point for hybrid scientist-programmers.
While I think you're correct that goals and roles may be different, on average, for the scientist-turned-programmer trajectory, there are plenty of RSEs who come from the opposite direction, i.e. strong programming background, but picks up the problem domain on the job.
Source: am RSE. And I will also say, a few of the scientists I support are among the best software engineers I have ever worked with, despite caring about code only insofar as it can help answer useful questions.
She still doesn't feel comfortable with Python (or any language) and often needs guidance / help. Mostly because in this role, the amount of programming is really minuscule, and the expectation isn't that the programmer develops a useful application or library well-integrated into the larger ecosystem of applications or libraries. Rather it's that some research can sift through the data they've generated and publish on that.
The instances of "re-education" I was talking about were quite different: those were "programmer-first" people. In this capacity, they might write in a month more code than what what my wife wrote over the last four years, they are also expected to build a lot more complex (in terms of organization and integration) software.
I don't consider RSEs or similar roles to be professional programmers. These people typically have terminatory degrees in fields other than CS, but often no formal training in CS. They also rarely see their own goals in becoming as good of a programmer as they can, their evaluation is typically based on results that programming might help to bring about, but, in principle, isn't really necessary for. Sort of how you wouldn't call every programmer a "professional mathematician", even though writing programs is a kind of math, as is eg. checking out customers at the supermarket.
So, while someone like that might need years to adjust to a new language, OP seemed to have in mind professional good programmers. I think they even had another bullet point for hybrid scientist-programmers.