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Worked with a principle engineer once who used language as a litmus test. If you could not understand functional programming like Lisp or MLs, he'd just know no
by didibus 10y ago
Worked with a principle engineer once who used language as a litmus test. If you could not understand functional programming like Lisp or MLs, he'd just know not to get you on his team.
Obviously, most of the software could be written by monkeys, and only need to produce trivial functionality, in those cases, please switch to Go or at least stick to Java or C#. I say that because in the hands of someone who doesn't know, more expressive languages can cause havoc, and turn really messy. Especially the hybrid languages like Scala.
- unoti 10y agoLeading teams to victory and accomplishing business objectives is an even more important litmus test, in my book. But different strokes for different folks I guess!
- didibus 10y agoBut the best thing you can do to improve the team's chances of accomplishing business objectives is to choose its members more carefully.
- unoti 10y agoI agree. But personally I'd be concerned about a team lead who thinks the make or break thing is whether a candidate engineer loves fondling their monads all day.
- didibus 10y agoYa, it's a little draconian, but in practice it was more nuanced. If you just didn't know those things, it was fine, but if you couldn't learn and eventually understand them...
- lacampbell 10y agoHe said languages like Lisps and ML - they're not famous for monads.
- justinhj 10y agoI don't know why this comment is downvoted, it's absolutely true in my experience.