9 ms·

"Hiring Haskell developers is not hard", it's already hard to get good Java developer can't imagine for Haskell...

by Thaxll 10y ago

ebiester 10y ago
There are a good subset of developers wanting to work full time in any functional language, and most of them have walked through haskell at some point.
diggan 10y ago
I guess it goes with the saying that "Hiring (Haskell) developers is not hard, hiring good (Haskell) developers is hard"
- tluyben2 10y ago
  In my (limited) experience it is easier to spot bad developers in (perceived hard) niche languages so I would assume a smaller % in that already small group tries to bluff their way in. Learning Haskell, Prolog or something like Coq usually starts on an academic level and if one wants to pursue a carrier it needs to turn into a quite time consuming 'hobby' first if you do not roll into something from uni. In my experience people who are bad are not looking for a career in it while they would be in more mainstream languages (... were Stackoverflow can get you quite far anyway).
RussianCow 10y ago
On the other hand, though, any developer that knows Haskell is much more likely to be a good developer. So even if the overall pool is smaller, the percentage of that pool that is qualified is probably much higher.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Probably easier for Haskell: for Java (and most other broadly-recognized-as-industrially-popular languages) a lot of the problem of hiring good developers is separating the people that are self-motivated, will dig into to new challenges, and do something more than cargo cult coding from the herd. With Haskell, well, that's probably a lot less of a problem, for now.
boothead 10y ago
This is actually the other way round. Given: 1. People who learn Haskell put in a lot of effort for their own learning benefit - they're not usually learning Haskell to get a job. 2. Once you learn Haskell you really kind of want a Haskell job to put all this nice stuff into practice. 3. There aren't many Haskell jobs about (in part due to a perception that it's hard to hire Haskell developers). As a company in the lucky position of hiring for a Haskell role you have a pool of people who have self selected to be above average in determination and smarts, but limited options in employment in their new tech of choice. source Built a Haskell team at a startup, now work on a Haskell team in finance. Hiring has NEVER been a problem.
- akavi 10y ago
  > Built a Haskell team at a startup, now work on a Haskell team in finance. Hiring has NEVER been a problem. Mind sharing names?
  - 0xmohit 10y ago
    Standard Chartered is one. https://twitter.com/donsbot https://twitter.com/donsbot -- author of Real World Haskell See https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_industry https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_industry for more. Several other financial names including Bank of America Merril Lynch, Barclays Capital, Capital IQ, Credit Suisse, Tsuru Capital are listed.
    - cm3 10y ago
      They even have their internal Haskell compiler which IIUC gets fed a dialect in order to have strict evaluation and a couple other non-standard properties. One nice thing the ecosystem got from their internal team is the official Shake implementation, which supersedes the various 3rd-party implementations and actually works really well. It even can interpret Ninja files, so it can be used in place of ninja when building things like Cmake-based projects or, say, Chromium. Not that there much of a reason to use Shake when you use Ninja, but you can and some of the reporting features might be exclusive to Shake. Usually you write a Shakefile.hs (instead of Makefile) and run it with shake.
oconnore 10y ago
> it's already hard to get good Java developer try{ Well, obviously, you're making them write Java. }catch(CheekyJokeException e){ // todo }
- hexane360 10y ago
  Sub WriteGoodJava On Error Resume Next While True 'todo: write something End While End Sub
0xmohit 10y ago
> it's already hard to get good Java developer Yes, after looking at code that reads int i = (STDIN); when one intends to read a variable from standard input, I couldn't agree more.
- justinsaccount 10y ago
  Maybe they were a perl developer where $i = <STDIN>; works
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Having been doing Java on and off since 1996, I would protest that java.io.* is a freaking zoo that I still don't have memorized. For all C's faults, I still miss the simplicity of "FILE (star)", created by either "fopen()" or "popen()" Not that I would have wrote that... :-)
js8 10y ago
I actually prefer Haskell, because it is pretty simple, you have datatypes and functions and that's it.. In Java, things are more complicated, with all the different design patterns and classes and other contraptions. I think you have to be smarter to program in Java than to program in Haskell.
- jonnybgood 10y ago
  > you have datatypes and functions and that's it For a "Hello World", maybe. Developing a non-trivial Haskell app or library will require the equivalent amount of knowledge (if not more) as developing a Java app or library.
- progman 10y ago
  Really? Fine. Then please show me a list of Haskell equivalents of Eclipse, NetBeans, Open Office, e-commerce software, and other big software which was written in Java. Thank you.
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > Really? Fine. Then please show me a list of Haskell equivalents of Eclipse, NetBeans, Open Office, e-commerce software, and other big software which was written in Java. Thank you. What in the world about js8's post, which said (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11895156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11895156): > I actually prefer Haskell, because it is pretty simple, you have datatypes and functions and that's it.. In Java, things are more complicated, with all the different design patterns and classes and other contraptions. I think you have to be smarter to program in Java than to program in Haskell. did you take to be a claim that Haskell offers equivalents of the vast Java ecosystem, or even any claim about the relative merits of the products of the languages (rather than the ease of using them to program)?
    - progman 10y ago
      If people claim that Haskell is "pretty simple" and Java is "more complicated" then why in the world is there almost no evidence for that? Why are things like Eclipse and Netbeans availabe for many years why Haskell is still blaming itself by fighting the very basic cabal hell? I know sandboxes and Nix and all those tools which circumvent the cabal hell. But consider how the Java world would respond if Java 9 would require sandboxes or Nix to manage every software project :-) I like Haskell, and I consider Haskell far superior (and more complicated) than Java. I also know Java pretty well. Java is far from being "more complicated" than Haskell. There is a reason why there are way more Java developers than Haskell developers. In my experience Haskell is powerful and elegant but not very practical. Practical are other languages (Rust, C++, Java, Nim, OCaml, ...). That' why Eclipse, Open Office, MS Office, operating systems, mars land projects and other big software is written in everything but Haskell. https://www.quora.com/Functional-Programming-Which-of-Haskell-and-OCaml-is-more-practical/answer/Jon-Harrop-2?srid=OsrX&share=1 https://www.quora.com/Functional-Programming-Which-of-Haskel...
kirubakaran 10y ago
Here is an interesting answer: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-learn-Haskell/answer/Justin-Leitgeb-1 https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-learn-Haskell...
dllthomas 10y ago
Looking, a year back, for some to take over a Haskell project, I received a good deal of interest from very qualified Haskellers, despite promising substantially under market rate with no prospect of later windfall (work was on a non-profit). If you are able to pay people what they are worth, I can't imagine how easy you'd have it.
quantumhobbit 10y ago
Stop hiring "Java developers" or "Erlang developers" or "Blub3.0 developers". Just hire developers who are smart enough to learn whatever language you are using. Maybe you hire a "developer with experience in functional languages such as Haskell" if you are in a rush. But if you find yourself in a place where you need to hire very specific skills with no time to train, then you have already lost.
- jwatte 10y ago
  By the way, I have some openings for Blub3.0 developers, if you're interested! Two years experience minimum required.
  - douche 10y ago
    It's a language you just created last Tuesday, isn't it?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- jimbokun 10y ago
  "Just hire developers who are smart enough to learn whatever language you are using." Knowing a less-commonly-used language like Haskell could be a fairly good indicator for this quality.
  - quantumhobbit 10y ago
    Very true. I think this is the source of pg's python paradox from back when python was much less popular than it is today.
agumonkey 10y ago
Just curious, how would you describe a bad Java developer, a good one, and how can one test this ?

"Hiring Haskell developers is not hard", it's already hard to get good Java developer can't imagine for Haskell...

by Thaxll 10y ago

"Hiring Haskell developers is not hard", it's already hard to get good Java developer can't imagine for Haskell...

There are a good subset of developers wanting to work full time in any functional language, and most of them have walked through haskell at some point.

diggan 10y ago

I guess it goes with the saying that "Hiring (Haskell) developers is not hard, hiring good (Haskell) developers is hard"

tluyben2 10y ago
In my (limited) experience it is easier to spot bad developers in (perceived hard) niche languages so I would assume a smaller % in that already small group tries to bluff their way in. Learning Haskell, Prolog or something like Coq usually starts on an academic level and if one wants to pursue a carrier it needs to turn into a quite time consuming 'hobby' first if you do not roll into something from uni. In my experience people who are bad are not looking for a career in it while they would be in more mainstream languages (... were Stackoverflow can get you quite far anyway).

RussianCow 10y ago

On the other hand, though, any developer that knows Haskell is much more likely to be a good developer. So even if the overall pool is smaller, the percentage of that pool that is qualified is probably much higher.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Probably easier for Haskell: for Java (and most other broadly-recognized-as-industrially-popular languages) a lot of the problem of hiring good developers is separating the people that are self-motivated, will dig into to new challenges, and do something more than cargo cult coding from the herd. With Haskell, well, that's probably a lot less of a problem, for now.

boothead 10y ago

This is actually the other way round. Given: 1. People who learn Haskell put in a lot of effort for their own learning benefit - they're not usually learning Haskell to get a job. 2. Once you learn Haskell you really kind of want a Haskell job to put all this nice stuff into practice. 3. There aren't many Haskell jobs about (in part due to a perception that it's hard to hire Haskell developers). As a company in the lucky position of hiring for a Haskell role you have a pool of people who have self selected to be above average in determination and smarts, but limited options in employment in their new tech of choice. source Built a Haskell team at a startup, now work on a Haskell team in finance. Hiring has NEVER been a problem.

akavi 10y ago
> Built a Haskell team at a startup, now work on a Haskell team in finance. Hiring has NEVER been a problem. Mind sharing names?
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  Standard Chartered is one. https://twitter.com/donsbot https://twitter.com/donsbot -- author of Real World Haskell See https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_industry https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_industry for more. Several other financial names including Bank of America Merril Lynch, Barclays Capital, Capital IQ, Credit Suisse, Tsuru Capital are listed.
  - cm3 10y ago
    They even have their internal Haskell compiler which IIUC gets fed a dialect in order to have strict evaluation and a couple other non-standard properties. One nice thing the ecosystem got from their internal team is the official Shake implementation, which supersedes the various 3rd-party implementations and actually works really well. It even can interpret Ninja files, so it can be used in place of ninja when building things like Cmake-based projects or, say, Chromium. Not that there much of a reason to use Shake when you use Ninja, but you can and some of the reporting features might be exclusive to Shake. Usually you write a Shakefile.hs (instead of Makefile) and run it with shake.

oconnore 10y ago

> it's already hard to get good Java developer try{ Well, obviously, you're making them write Java. }catch(CheekyJokeException e){ // todo }

hexane360 10y ago
Sub WriteGoodJava On Error Resume Next While True 'todo: write something End While End Sub

0xmohit 10y ago

> it's already hard to get good Java developer Yes, after looking at code that reads int i = (STDIN); when one intends to read a variable from standard input, I couldn't agree more.

justinsaccount 10y ago
Maybe they were a perl developer where $i = <STDIN>; works
Roboprog 10y ago
Having been doing Java on and off since 1996, I would protest that java.io.* is a freaking zoo that I still don't have memorized. For all C's faults, I still miss the simplicity of "FILE (star)", created by either "fopen()" or "popen()" Not that I would have wrote that... :-)

js8 10y ago

I actually prefer Haskell, because it is pretty simple, you have datatypes and functions and that's it.. In Java, things are more complicated, with all the different design patterns and classes and other contraptions. I think you have to be smarter to program in Java than to program in Haskell.

jonnybgood 10y ago
> you have datatypes and functions and that's it For a "Hello World", maybe. Developing a non-trivial Haskell app or library will require the equivalent amount of knowledge (if not more) as developing a Java app or library.
progman 10y ago
Really? Fine. Then please show me a list of Haskell equivalents of Eclipse, NetBeans, Open Office, e-commerce software, and other big software which was written in Java. Thank you.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > Really? Fine. Then please show me a list of Haskell equivalents of Eclipse, NetBeans, Open Office, e-commerce software, and other big software which was written in Java. Thank you. What in the world about js8's post, which said (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11895156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11895156): > I actually prefer Haskell, because it is pretty simple, you have datatypes and functions and that's it.. In Java, things are more complicated, with all the different design patterns and classes and other contraptions. I think you have to be smarter to program in Java than to program in Haskell. did you take to be a claim that Haskell offers equivalents of the vast Java ecosystem, or even any claim about the relative merits of the products of the languages (rather than the ease of using them to program)?
  - progman 10y ago
    If people claim that Haskell is "pretty simple" and Java is "more complicated" then why in the world is there almost no evidence for that? Why are things like Eclipse and Netbeans availabe for many years why Haskell is still blaming itself by fighting the very basic cabal hell? I know sandboxes and Nix and all those tools which circumvent the cabal hell. But consider how the Java world would respond if Java 9 would require sandboxes or Nix to manage every software project :-) I like Haskell, and I consider Haskell far superior (and more complicated) than Java. I also know Java pretty well. Java is far from being "more complicated" than Haskell. There is a reason why there are way more Java developers than Haskell developers. In my experience Haskell is powerful and elegant but not very practical. Practical are other languages (Rust, C++, Java, Nim, OCaml, ...). That' why Eclipse, Open Office, MS Office, operating systems, mars land projects and other big software is written in everything but Haskell. https://www.quora.com/Functional-Programming-Which-of-Haskell-and-OCaml-is-more-practical/answer/Jon-Harrop-2?srid=OsrX&share=1 https://www.quora.com/Functional-Programming-Which-of-Haskel...

kirubakaran 10y ago

Here is an interesting answer: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-learn-Haskell/answer/Justin-Leitgeb-1 https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-learn-Haskell...

dllthomas 10y ago

Looking, a year back, for some to take over a Haskell project, I received a good deal of interest from very qualified Haskellers, despite promising substantially under market rate with no prospect of later windfall (work was on a non-profit). If you are able to pay people what they are worth, I can't imagine how easy you'd have it.

quantumhobbit 10y ago

Stop hiring "Java developers" or "Erlang developers" or "Blub3.0 developers". Just hire developers who are smart enough to learn whatever language you are using. Maybe you hire a "developer with experience in functional languages such as Haskell" if you are in a rush. But if you find yourself in a place where you need to hire very specific skills with no time to train, then you have already lost.

jwatte 10y ago
By the way, I have some openings for Blub3.0 developers, if you're interested! Two years experience minimum required.
- douche 10y ago
  It's a language you just created last Tuesday, isn't it?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
jimbokun 10y ago
"Just hire developers who are smart enough to learn whatever language you are using." Knowing a less-commonly-used language like Haskell could be a fairly good indicator for this quality.
- quantumhobbit 10y ago
  Very true. I think this is the source of pg's python paradox from back when python was much less popular than it is today.

agumonkey 10y ago

Just curious, how would you describe a bad Java developer, a good one, and how can one test this ?