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One way I use Stackoverflow’s dev stats is to make educated guesses about the easiness of finding developers in 2-3 years time to maintain now-greenfield projec

One way I use Stackoverflow’s dev stats is to make educated guesses about the easiness of finding developers in 2-3 years time to maintain now-greenfield projects. Does Ruby seem to go down while Python is in steady growth? Let's move away from Rails. Swift is picking up steam? It's safe to switch from Objective-C. This dataset seems to be just fantastic for that.

segmondy 10y ago
In my opinion, that's what's wrong with the world. Chasing tech, pick something solid and stick with it. I have seen developers barely get decent in one language only to drop it and learn a new language. Picking up the basics of a language is easy, but it's knowing the nuisance that separates the professional from the amateur.
- bottled_poe 10y ago
  It's much easier to be a rockstar developer when the pool of developers is so small. The game of chasing the "best" technology is pretty much a ponzi scheme.
- bootload 10y ago
  "Picking up the basics of a language is easy, but it's knowing the nuisance that separates the professional from the amateur." From learning perspective correct. I don't think developers chase new languages, I think it's more, play 'catch up to latest language' to be more employable. You would hope companies, CTOs, lead techs choose languages to solve the unique business problems. Language choice looks more, to me, like taste. Like choosing something ^nice^ from a menu at a restaurant depending on what is palatable.
  - segmondy 10y ago
    I can't tell, I know many developers today who are on the new shiny js thing, golang, elixir, scalar, rust train, but they never got really good in their first language be it Java, python, or php. They use linux or OSX. But they don't know awk/sed/bash, give em a very simple problem, they would write 1000 line of OOP, united test code when a few line of scripts would solve it. I know many programmers, who graduated with a CS degree, they go out of their way to implement ridiculous rule engines and overly complicated systems, when they can just use prolog and glue their app to prolog. I've witnessed many so called fullstack developers who break out in cold sweat at the sight or thought of writing SQL. They want an ORM. This is what I call chasing, new things, when the old things are rock solid. I see this today, where people cry about PHP, but yet don't even use it's good features. Go use NoSQL solutions but never even had a clue about their SQL DB. /rant
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      > They use linux or OSX. But they don't know awk/sed/bash Am I in the minority of developers then? I don't know awk and sed and I'm honestly not very interested in learning them. But bash I definitely agree with. I still use a cheatsheet to get the syntax right because it's weird as hell imo.
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
        There's no reason to use awk or sed when perl exists (a2p and s2p have existed for decades)
        kazinator 10y ago
        There is no reason to use perl in situation when awk kicks its butt with clearer, shorter code free of distracting sigils and other line noise Awk is also POSIX standard; a good remaining reason to use it (if it is a feasible alternative for a task) is that a script has to be portable outside of GNU/Linux.
        tripa 10y ago
        I like Perl a lot better than awk, buy I do agree with the general sentiment of using the language that makes for the clearest code for the task at hand, especially the smaller ones. Which makes me a frequent awk proponent. So I'm surprised at the following part of your comment: > There is no reason to use perl in situation when awk kicks its butt with clearer, shorter code free of distracting author and other line noise In my experience, the shorter ask code tends to be the one with sigils.
        jhbadger 10y ago
        But in a lot of ways awk seems way more modern than Perl (Perl 5 at least). You actually have functions with parameters rather than having a weird @_ array that you need to shift values from. Honestly, if I didn't know otherwise, I'd think awk came after Perl.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonm23 10y ago
  s/nuisance/nuance
  - thyrsus 10y ago
    They probably meant nuance, but I think the biggest part of experience is knowing all the nuisances (especially in the accompanying development environment) and how to get around them.
  - hexane360 10y ago
    "expression #1, char 17: unterminated `s' character"
- nulagrithom 10y ago
  > Picking up the basics of a language is easy, but it's knowing the nuisance that separates the professional from the amateur. I disagree. I went from C# to Node.js and back to C#. I learned the hell out of JavaScript, and yet I feel like nobody will ever care that I can explain some of its nuances and gotchas. Language nuances are constantly evolving anyway. Learning Node.js unlocked whole paradigms I didn't understand in C#. I never really "got" functional programming. Switching between the two helped me understand the pros and cons of different approaches. I discovered a lot of the things I miss from JavaScript are actually there in C#, just a little off the beaten path. On the other hand, I can appreciate "the C# way" and breathe a sigh of relief that certain gotchas do not exist in that environment.
  - eptcyka 10y ago
    Whilst it's true that one can program in a functional style in almost any language, I fail to see how javascript would help someone learn about functional programming.
    - darkkindness 10y ago
      It's true that you can program in a functional style in almost any language, but it's just simpler for Javascript. Functions are first-class objects in Javascript, and arrays have built-in forEach, map, reduce, and filter -- all useful for a beginner in functional programming. C++ and Java have lambdas and foreach, but they aren't as simple to use.
      - eptcyka 10y ago
        There is nothing wrong with map, reduce and filter, but I believe this is just conflating nice and usable APIs for iterators with functional programming.
        sulam 10y ago
        http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap5.html http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap5.html s/Lisp/JavaScript/g
nurettin 10y ago
Company I work in still uses Delphi 7. Professional environments don't want language hipsters, they want developers. Developers can and do adapt to the environment they happen to end up in, be it haskell, c or Delphi. And they can find pleasure at work once they are used to it.

segmondy 10y ago

In my opinion, that's what's wrong with the world. Chasing tech, pick something solid and stick with it. I have seen developers barely get decent in one language only to drop it and learn a new language. Picking up the basics of a language is easy, but it's knowing the nuisance that separates the professional from the amateur.

bottled_poe 10y ago
It's much easier to be a rockstar developer when the pool of developers is so small. The game of chasing the "best" technology is pretty much a ponzi scheme.
bootload 10y ago
"Picking up the basics of a language is easy, but it's knowing the nuisance that separates the professional from the amateur." From learning perspective correct. I don't think developers chase new languages, I think it's more, play 'catch up to latest language' to be more employable. You would hope companies, CTOs, lead techs choose languages to solve the unique business problems. Language choice looks more, to me, like taste. Like choosing something ^nice^ from a menu at a restaurant depending on what is palatable.
- segmondy 10y ago
  I can't tell, I know many developers today who are on the new shiny js thing, golang, elixir, scalar, rust train, but they never got really good in their first language be it Java, python, or php. They use linux or OSX. But they don't know awk/sed/bash, give em a very simple problem, they would write 1000 line of OOP, united test code when a few line of scripts would solve it. I know many programmers, who graduated with a CS degree, they go out of their way to implement ridiculous rule engines and overly complicated systems, when they can just use prolog and glue their app to prolog. I've witnessed many so called fullstack developers who break out in cold sweat at the sight or thought of writing SQL. They want an ORM. This is what I call chasing, new things, when the old things are rock solid. I see this today, where people cry about PHP, but yet don't even use it's good features. Go use NoSQL solutions but never even had a clue about their SQL DB. /rant
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    > They use linux or OSX. But they don't know awk/sed/bash Am I in the minority of developers then? I don't know awk and sed and I'm honestly not very interested in learning them. But bash I definitely agree with. I still use a cheatsheet to get the syntax right because it's weird as hell imo.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
      There's no reason to use awk or sed when perl exists (a2p and s2p have existed for decades)
      - kazinator 10y ago
        There is no reason to use perl in situation when awk kicks its butt with clearer, shorter code free of distracting sigils and other line noise Awk is also POSIX standard; a good remaining reason to use it (if it is a feasible alternative for a task) is that a script has to be portable outside of GNU/Linux.
        tripa 10y ago
        I like Perl a lot better than awk, buy I do agree with the general sentiment of using the language that makes for the clearest code for the task at hand, especially the smaller ones. Which makes me a frequent awk proponent. So I'm surprised at the following part of your comment: > There is no reason to use perl in situation when awk kicks its butt with clearer, shorter code free of distracting author and other line noise In my experience, the shorter ask code tends to be the one with sigils.
        jhbadger 10y ago
        But in a lot of ways awk seems way more modern than Perl (Perl 5 at least). You actually have functions with parameters rather than having a weird @_ array that you need to shift values from. Honestly, if I didn't know otherwise, I'd think awk came after Perl.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jasonm23 10y ago
s/nuisance/nuance
- thyrsus 10y ago
  They probably meant nuance, but I think the biggest part of experience is knowing all the nuisances (especially in the accompanying development environment) and how to get around them.
- hexane360 10y ago
  "expression #1, char 17: unterminated `s' character"
nulagrithom 10y ago
> Picking up the basics of a language is easy, but it's knowing the nuisance that separates the professional from the amateur. I disagree. I went from C# to Node.js and back to C#. I learned the hell out of JavaScript, and yet I feel like nobody will ever care that I can explain some of its nuances and gotchas. Language nuances are constantly evolving anyway. Learning Node.js unlocked whole paradigms I didn't understand in C#. I never really "got" functional programming. Switching between the two helped me understand the pros and cons of different approaches. I discovered a lot of the things I miss from JavaScript are actually there in C#, just a little off the beaten path. On the other hand, I can appreciate "the C# way" and breathe a sigh of relief that certain gotchas do not exist in that environment.
- eptcyka 10y ago
  Whilst it's true that one can program in a functional style in almost any language, I fail to see how javascript would help someone learn about functional programming.
  - darkkindness 10y ago
    It's true that you can program in a functional style in almost any language, but it's just simpler for Javascript. Functions are first-class objects in Javascript, and arrays have built-in forEach, map, reduce, and filter -- all useful for a beginner in functional programming. C++ and Java have lambdas and foreach, but they aren't as simple to use.
    - eptcyka 10y ago
      There is nothing wrong with map, reduce and filter, but I believe this is just conflating nice and usable APIs for iterators with functional programming.
      - sulam 10y ago
        http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap5.html http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap5.html s/Lisp/JavaScript/g

nurettin 10y ago

Company I work in still uses Delphi 7. Professional environments don't want language hipsters, they want developers. Developers can and do adapt to the environment they happen to end up in, be it haskell, c or Delphi. And they can find pleasure at work once they are used to it.