4 ms·

I think that focusing on how long it takes to be productive is a mistake, within reason at least. How well does it hold up once I'm knowledgeable with the langu

I think that focusing on how long it takes to be productive is a mistake, within reason at least. How well does it hold up once I'm knowledgeable with the language matters a lot more. If it takes me 4 days or 3 weeks to be productive, ok, that's fine, but it needs to be a good solution once I'm there, because I'll spend years using it potentially.

strken 10y ago
The really, really important thing about the time it takes to be productive in a language is selling the language to other people. If it takes 3 weeks to learn enough Rust to make interesting projects, then it's going to be absolute hell convincing a team of largely ambivalent co-workers to use Rust, because 3 weeks is equivalent to months of weekend tinkering. You're restricted to using Rust either when it has mass adoption, it interests your devs, or the domain needs provable safety guarantees. On the other hand, if someone can pick up Go and produce a side project with two weekends worth of messing around, they're much more likely to be supportive of the language. Obviously this isn't ideal, but I don't know how you'd fix the problem.
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  Do you really want people on your team who think that having to read a free book and investing 3 weeks to learn a new language is too much of an effort?
  - strken 10y ago
    Firstly, when the initial impression of a language is that it's not fast to code in, people seem to assume that it will remain unproductive in regular use. This is clearly the case with ESR, and is a problem that's relevant to the Rust community in general. Secondly, as per the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want.
  - solidsnack9000 10y ago
    Sometimes you don't have a choice. You don't want those people but they are forced on you. It's strange the short term focus that is accepted in what are nominally professionals.
  - saturn_vk 10y ago
    It may very well be out of your hands. I wasn't able to convince my coworkers to use Kotlin for an android app, even though at the end of the day I was the only one coding it. And Kotlin takes a few hours to pick up if you know Java.
  - TorKlingberg 10y ago
    Maybe they are spending those three weeks learning something else. There are thousands of things that "every programmer should know" and thousands more that "every human should know", and you will never have time to learn them all.

strken 10y ago

The really, really important thing about the time it takes to be productive in a language is selling the language to other people. If it takes 3 weeks to learn enough Rust to make interesting projects, then it's going to be absolute hell convincing a team of largely ambivalent co-workers to use Rust, because 3 weeks is equivalent to months of weekend tinkering. You're restricted to using Rust either when it has mass adoption, it interests your devs, or the domain needs provable safety guarantees. On the other hand, if someone can pick up Go and produce a side project with two weekends worth of messing around, they're much more likely to be supportive of the language. Obviously this isn't ideal, but I don't know how you'd fix the problem.

dorfsmay 10y ago
Do you really want people on your team who think that having to read a free book and investing 3 weeks to learn a new language is too much of an effort?
- strken 10y ago
  Firstly, when the initial impression of a language is that it's not fast to code in, people seem to assume that it will remain unproductive in regular use. This is clearly the case with ESR, and is a problem that's relevant to the Rust community in general. Secondly, as per the Rolling Stones, you can't always get what you want.
- solidsnack9000 10y ago
  Sometimes you don't have a choice. You don't want those people but they are forced on you. It's strange the short term focus that is accepted in what are nominally professionals.
- saturn_vk 10y ago
  It may very well be out of your hands. I wasn't able to convince my coworkers to use Kotlin for an android app, even though at the end of the day I was the only one coding it. And Kotlin takes a few hours to pick up if you know Java.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  Maybe they are spending those three weeks learning something else. There are thousands of things that "every programmer should know" and thousands more that "every human should know", and you will never have time to learn them all.