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Respectfully disagree. PHP suffers from a contempt of the familiar. Lots of programmers of a certain age started off writing PHP poorly before they knew how to

Respectfully disagree. PHP suffers from a contempt of the familiar. Lots of programmers of a certain age started off writing PHP poorly before they knew how to properly do their craft (in PHP or otherwise). When you mention PHP, the immediate association for some people is invariably going to be "that really bad PHP 3.5 site I made that one time." Leaving aside any positive or negative points to be made about the language itself, you're dealing with that. On the other hand, if you work in a generally well regarded but less used language like OCaml IMO you're much more likely to trigger a "huh, I've been meaning to play around with that," or maybe a "gee, if you could pick up an ML while interning you must be pretty adaptable." The relative obscurity might even work in your favor if the person interviewing you is familiar with The Blub Paradox[0] and suspects OCaml might be higher up the language power continuum than the languages they know and you get cred for being a language wonk. [0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

danellis 8y ago
> When you mention PHP, the immediate association for some people is invariably going to be "that really bad PHP 3.5 site I made that one time." Except in the many thousands of companies that are looking for PHP programmers, where not having it on a resume is damaging.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  Certainly, but I'd guess that most of the people who worked at Jane Street are looking to work at places that also don't use PHP. Either that, or they're looking at jobs with hiring managers intelligent enough to realize that they can pick up a new language on the job.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  Honestly, people who are looking for PHP programmers are not looking for me. It's not going to be a fulfilling experience for me, and I'm not going to be a great fit for their company culture. (I'm in a "microservices architecture" (their word, not mine; I find it cringey, but eh) org where we're expected to deliver features as REST APIs, programming language be damned.)
3rdAccount 8y ago
I think this only applies where people have even heard of OCaml, Lisp, Paul Graham...etc. Most people will just think you're the crazy person off in left-field and not respect you for looking outside the box. Of course your mileage will vary. I think you have to remember that the average dev just thinks of software as a job, while someone on HN gets into the theory and philosophy of coding.

danellis 8y ago

> When you mention PHP, the immediate association for some people is invariably going to be "that really bad PHP 3.5 site I made that one time." Except in the many thousands of companies that are looking for PHP programmers, where not having it on a resume is damaging.

joshuamorton 8y ago
Certainly, but I'd guess that most of the people who worked at Jane Street are looking to work at places that also don't use PHP. Either that, or they're looking at jobs with hiring managers intelligent enough to realize that they can pick up a new language on the job.
thanatropism 8y ago
Honestly, people who are looking for PHP programmers are not looking for me. It's not going to be a fulfilling experience for me, and I'm not going to be a great fit for their company culture. (I'm in a "microservices architecture" (their word, not mine; I find it cringey, but eh) org where we're expected to deliver features as REST APIs, programming language be damned.)

3rdAccount 8y ago

I think this only applies where people have even heard of OCaml, Lisp, Paul Graham...etc. Most people will just think you're the crazy person off in left-field and not respect you for looking outside the box. Of course your mileage will vary. I think you have to remember that the average dev just thinks of software as a job, while someone on HN gets into the theory and philosophy of coding.