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Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle. Don't ever say you develop applicati
by lelele 16y ago
Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle.
Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. Clojure is just a Jar, isn't it? Then you are just using a Java library, aren't you?
Prototypes usually end up in production, don't they? Then develop such prototypes in an agile language and just make them follow their destiny.
What are you doing around Hacker News, if you aren't able to hack the system?
EDIT: However, you should also understand when your language of choice just doesn't fit a gray-suited environment, and indeed I think Ruby doesn't. Python does.
- jacquesm 16y ago> Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. That would be lying though, and it could get you in to a whole pile of hot water. Such 'technical tricks' may work a few times but eventually you'll have a real problem.
- gaius 16y agoIt's a matter of semantics. "A Java application" is perfectly honest. Just like when someone says "a native application" it says nothing about if it was actually written in OCaml.
- jacquesm 16y agoUntil the time that HR hires a person to collaborate on your project with 'java' experience and it turns out you wrote your code in clojure. Stuff like that tends to have consequences, especially when there are contracts and liabilities involved.
- gaius 16y agoWe used to say that Tcl/Tk was a C library with a very complex configuration file ;-)
- mahmud 16y agoExcellent!
- lelele 16y agoDoesn't HR list frameworks along with languages? Is JDK knowledge alone enough to be employed anywhere?
- rcoder 16y agoI've only been on one project where HR was so far divorced from the team executing on a project to hire candidates without us vetting them, and it was (unsurprisingly) a complete disaster. Also, if you're hiring programmers who can't pick up a new language to work on your project, you're doing it wrong. Most of the capable folks I've worked with loved learning new tech; the problem is usually keeping them from jumping onto a new platform for every project.
- joubert 16y agoYou could quote Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming, and say therefor you skipped the error-prone process of increasing complexity-building.
- z92 16y agoI personally don't think that will be lying. I built a Java app that sets up the environment, starts Rhino and executes the app from there. The Rhino then make calls into Java classes for DB, file access and low level stuff only. What do I call that solution? "Developed in Java". Here Rhino is to Java what JavaScript is to a HTML web site.
- twymer 16y agoI think the safe way, if you want to follow that policy, is to say you develop for the JRE or for the JVM. Neither of these are lies, but they keep with the original idea of keeping peoples focus on "Java".
- lelele 16y agoI understand your suspicions: switching perspective is something techies have a difficult time with. Is Arc a language or is it a bunch of macros on top of MzScheme? It depends on how you see it. Clojure is 100% compatible with Java, both ways in a straightforward manner, so you can easily argue that it's still Java. That's been the smartest design decision ever by its designer. You have to understand whether your clients are interested either in leveraging the Java technology or employing code-drones. In the former case, Clojure will be fine; in the latter one it will not. Popular wisdom teaches that most people remember the result, not the way you got it. If you use Clojure and succeed, you'll have your own way.
- mahmud 16y agoAnd my own experience concurs with lelele.
- jcromartie 16y agoAlthough it bears more truth than you might think. As of Clojure 1.2, you can implement Java types from Clojure and you could build a plain old Java interface to the system if you needed to. And you'll likely be making use of many standard/community Java libraries.
- cageface 16y agoWhat makes you say Python is more appropriate for greysuits? Ruby and Python seem very much alike to me.
- jiaaro 16y agoGoogle makes him say it ;)
- lelele 16y agoYeah, Google, for the most part. You are not using an agile language, you are using some of the technology Google relies on, aren't you? ;-) Google, and beyond it. You could easily have a case for Python: Nokia has made it available for Symbian, Microsoft endorses it via ActiveState, and so on. My friends, if we want to be effective entrepreneurs, we must learn how to repackage things in a way customers will find attractive. A language can be just a technology, a framework, an application, and so on... whatever concerns your customers. There is no point in being strict about terminology, unless you are selling to savvy techies.
- batasrki 16y agoI'm sorry, but I don't agree. There is no reason why my customers need to know in what language the solution is developed in. Besides, Ruby powers many highly visible websites and web apps. If I'd be losing a sale because I develop in Ruby and NOT Python, chances are I don't want that sale in the first place.
- jacquesm 16y ago> There is no reason why my customers need to know in what language the solution is developed in. Business continuity.
- batasrki 16y agoBusiness continuity applies only if we're talking about Java vs Ruby/Python/etc. If the choice is between Ruby and Python and Clojure and any of the "esoteric" languages as far as enterprises are concerned, that's a red herring.
- dschobel 16y agoWhen I was at my last company we encountered many a client which considered Java the "alien technology". I remember particularly one of the five largest banks in the world absolutely would not allow the JVM in their data center even if it was on our box. (This was the type of place where it took about a month and 3 or 4 signatures to get a port opened in the local network).