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> "we can't find Scala engineers" Is there such a thing as a PL engineer? I thought it was software engineer, and the particular language matters less than gen

> "we can't find Scala engineers" Is there such a thing as a PL engineer? I thought it was software engineer, and the particular language matters less than general software principles and practices. Plus, any new employee is going to have to learn the code base regardless of whether they start out knowing the language. Any software engineer should be able to learn a new language. The idea that you have to higher engineers who already know the language, particularly a high level general purpose one, seems suspect. It's not like they're writing some low level Rust or C code. It seems like a poor reason to port a code base, but I guess it happens often enough.

vosper 7y ago
> Any software engineer should be able to learn a new language. The idea that you have to higher engineers who already know the language, particularly a high level general purpose one, seems suspect. It's not like they're writing some low level Rust or C code. Yeah, I agree. And I'm doubtful that the time it would take for one or two competent people to come up to speed in Scala is less than the time we're spending to port the entire thing over to JS. It's months of engineering time. That time could have been spent improving the existing codebase rather than the much riskier option of porting to a new language. And then that team would have the Scala engineers it needs, for ongoing work. Or at least a shared resource to help out.
SaxonRobber 7y ago
Most developers aren’t software engineers, they are coders who just jump on the hottest JS trend or are utterly content with Enterprise Java mediocrity. Their entire lens is warped by a narrow view of “coding” and are incapable of programming anything beyond that frame.