5 ms·

I know a few Elm developers. Using a less mainstream language can actually be a boon to hiring. (Isn’t there a classic PG essay on how ViaWeb benefitted enormou

by alanh 11y ago

I know a few Elm developers. Using a less mainstream language can actually be a boon to hiring. (Isn’t there a classic PG essay on how ViaWeb benefitted enormously from using a Lisp when no competitors did?) > Had our first hire start today who applied because we use @elmlang in production. He rocked it! > PS: still hiring :) https://twitter.com/rtfeldman/status/656238188961226752 https://twitter.com/rtfeldman/status/656238188961226752 Furthermore, I’ve learned so many languages on the job in my career that I am unsympathetic to companies who refuse to believe that people who have learned programming can continue to learn programming!

kornish 11y ago
PG has a couple essays directly related to this topic. The first about using a language which is implicitly more powerful than others ("Beating the Averages") [1] and the other is about how using a less common language is a positive selector in the hiring process ("The Python Paradox") [2]. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html [2]: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
- omtanks 11y ago
  Agree on the first. On the second, "And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know.". I disagree, I like to solve problems more in Java. I tried several including Python over the years. I'm asked to do something in Python I will but for my money, Java is more readable than Python. It's an acute and false observation that he made. Less common does not necessarily equate to smarter/better/faster.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    This was dramatically more true of Python when he wrote it than presently. FWIW, I've recently been using Python for a job and find it deeply unsatisfying. I'm inclined to think that current-gen Java may well be better; the last time I used Java in anger it was basically a different language. Though to be fair, truly modern Python is also a bit different than what I've been working in.
smt88 11y ago
PG isn't God, and he related a single anecdote. I won't believe that argument unless I see current data that's language-specific. For example, I could imagine easily being able to hire devs to work on Go, but it'd probably be really hard to get them to work on Haskell.
- alanh 11y ago
  > PG isn't God Can you prove that? Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, after all. You’re being a bit militant in your pg-atheism. Okay, in all seriousness, you are correct. Ability to hire coders to work in a particular language is a legitimate concern to have. Still, it’s sad to see lack of usage drive, well, lack of usage – sometimes it looks to me like an unexamined assumption, or a self-fulfilling prophecy. To take it back to the land of religious arguments: it’s a bit cargo-culty.
  - smt88 11y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but "low popularity" is just one mark on one side of the pros/cons list. New languages can outweigh low popularity with lots of other important qualities: syntax, tooling, appropriateness for a certain purpose, abundance of libraries, etc. If the new language is easy to learn, that pretty much defeats the issue of low popularity all together! Unfortunately, a lot of new/amazing languages with great tooling are somewhat hard to learn. Again, Haskell might be a great language, but it's daunting to people who only have experience with C-like languages. Go is one of the exceptions, and I think it did that intentionally. Instead of having complex syntax, it just has lots of boilerplate. It's easier to read and easier to learn at the expense of being harder to write and harder to modify.
    - klibertp 11y ago
      > New languages can outweigh low popularity with lots of other important qualities [...] abundance of libraries, etc. How? > If the new language is easy to learn, that pretty much defeats the issue of low popularity all together! If the language is easy to learn it's probably not worth learning. "Easy to learn" in most contexts and for most people means "similar" or "familiar". Of course, there are languages truly easy to learn thanks to their small surface and internal consistency (like Erlang, PicoLisp, Forth...) but they are very rarely regarded as such. > Again, Haskell might be a great language, but it's daunting to people who only have experience with C-like languages. My opinion is that it's their problem, not Haskell's. Instead of "being daunted" they should go polyglot already and stop whining.

by alanh 11y ago

kornish 11y ago

PG has a couple essays directly related to this topic. The first about using a language which is implicitly more powerful than others ("Beating the Averages") [1] and the other is about how using a less common language is a positive selector in the hiring process ("The Python Paradox") [2]. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html [2]: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

omtanks 11y ago
Agree on the first. On the second, "And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know.". I disagree, I like to solve problems more in Java. I tried several including Python over the years. I'm asked to do something in Python I will but for my money, Java is more readable than Python. It's an acute and false observation that he made. Less common does not necessarily equate to smarter/better/faster.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  This was dramatically more true of Python when he wrote it than presently. FWIW, I've recently been using Python for a job and find it deeply unsatisfying. I'm inclined to think that current-gen Java may well be better; the last time I used Java in anger it was basically a different language. Though to be fair, truly modern Python is also a bit different than what I've been working in.

smt88 11y ago

PG isn't God, and he related a single anecdote. I won't believe that argument unless I see current data that's language-specific. For example, I could imagine easily being able to hire devs to work on Go, but it'd probably be really hard to get them to work on Haskell.

alanh 11y ago
> PG isn't God Can you prove that? Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, after all. You’re being a bit militant in your pg-atheism. Okay, in all seriousness, you are correct. Ability to hire coders to work in a particular language is a legitimate concern to have. Still, it’s sad to see lack of usage drive, well, lack of usage – sometimes it looks to me like an unexamined assumption, or a self-fulfilling prophecy. To take it back to the land of religious arguments: it’s a bit cargo-culty.
- smt88 11y ago
  I agree with what you're saying, but "low popularity" is just one mark on one side of the pros/cons list. New languages can outweigh low popularity with lots of other important qualities: syntax, tooling, appropriateness for a certain purpose, abundance of libraries, etc. If the new language is easy to learn, that pretty much defeats the issue of low popularity all together! Unfortunately, a lot of new/amazing languages with great tooling are somewhat hard to learn. Again, Haskell might be a great language, but it's daunting to people who only have experience with C-like languages. Go is one of the exceptions, and I think it did that intentionally. Instead of having complex syntax, it just has lots of boilerplate. It's easier to read and easier to learn at the expense of being harder to write and harder to modify.
  - klibertp 11y ago
    > New languages can outweigh low popularity with lots of other important qualities [...] abundance of libraries, etc. How? > If the new language is easy to learn, that pretty much defeats the issue of low popularity all together! If the language is easy to learn it's probably not worth learning. "Easy to learn" in most contexts and for most people means "similar" or "familiar". Of course, there are languages truly easy to learn thanks to their small surface and internal consistency (like Erlang, PicoLisp, Forth...) but they are very rarely regarded as such. > Again, Haskell might be a great language, but it's daunting to people who only have experience with C-like languages. My opinion is that it's their problem, not Haskell's. Instead of "being daunted" they should go polyglot already and stop whining.