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Ask HN: What functional language to learn to get a job?

5 points by qnsi 6y ago

I see most of them are losing popularity. Should I just give up my dreams of funcional language job?

PaulHoule 6y ago
Jdk 16. It has 95% of the features of your favorite functional language (particularly the ML family) but the IDE works, the debugger works, the sort() function works, the memory allocator goes out to lunch less, etc. Learn to write 'single file' Java with high order functions and you won't be pining away for new shiny 732.
- smt88 6y ago
  That's all fine and good, but I'd bet nearly 0% of employers looking for Java experts are going to have functional code bases.
ryan-duve 6y ago
In my experience at work, the business has problems and asks the technical teams for solutions. The technical team consists of just people, of course, and those people identify what the available options are for the solution. The more capabilities our team has, the more options we have to pick from. What I'm saying is instead of trying to pick a language (Lisp, Haskell, etc) to get good at to land a job that currently requires it, you should instead pick one that you enjoy learning and pursue it doggedly. This puts you in the position of recognizing the types of problems well suited to that solution. Inevitably, the business will raise a problem and you can demonstrate that a functional language solves it and you're suddenly working in the language you wanted. Of course, constraints vary from team to team and company to company. I think it would be harder to introduce a new language to a large, highly regulated company than a start up. In that case, your consideration should be less about which language to learn and more about which company to apply to.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  > Inevitably, the business will raise a problem and you can demonstrate that a functional language solves it and you're suddenly working in the language you wanted. I doubt it. I’ve toyed with many languages that seem like “the right tool for the job” in the way that they allow you to solve a problem more clearly, expressively and cleanly than a more mainstream choice might. But a company is probably more interested in “can I get access to large candidate pool for future maintenance”.
smt88 6y ago
F# is used in logistics, finance, and insurance. There aren't a lot of jobs, but certainly some big-name companies use it and have teams of dozens working on it.
danuker 6y ago
Looking at another HN submitter's analysis of StackOverflow data, I'd go with Scala. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26610499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26610499

5 points by qnsi 6y ago

I see most of them are losing popularity. Should I just give up my dreams of funcional language job?

Jdk 16. It has 95% of the features of your favorite functional language (particularly the ML family) but the IDE works, the debugger works, the sort() function works, the memory allocator goes out to lunch less, etc. Learn to write 'single file' Java with high order functions and you won't be pining away for new shiny 732.

smt88 6y ago
That's all fine and good, but I'd bet nearly 0% of employers looking for Java experts are going to have functional code bases.

ryan-duve 6y ago

In my experience at work, the business has problems and asks the technical teams for solutions. The technical team consists of just people, of course, and those people identify what the available options are for the solution. The more capabilities our team has, the more options we have to pick from. What I'm saying is instead of trying to pick a language (Lisp, Haskell, etc) to get good at to land a job that currently requires it, you should instead pick one that you enjoy learning and pursue it doggedly. This puts you in the position of recognizing the types of problems well suited to that solution. Inevitably, the business will raise a problem and you can demonstrate that a functional language solves it and you're suddenly working in the language you wanted. Of course, constraints vary from team to team and company to company. I think it would be harder to introduce a new language to a large, highly regulated company than a start up. In that case, your consideration should be less about which language to learn and more about which company to apply to.

the_only_law 6y ago
> Inevitably, the business will raise a problem and you can demonstrate that a functional language solves it and you're suddenly working in the language you wanted. I doubt it. I’ve toyed with many languages that seem like “the right tool for the job” in the way that they allow you to solve a problem more clearly, expressively and cleanly than a more mainstream choice might. But a company is probably more interested in “can I get access to large candidate pool for future maintenance”.

smt88 6y ago

F# is used in logistics, finance, and insurance. There aren't a lot of jobs, but certainly some big-name companies use it and have teams of dozens working on it.

danuker 6y ago

Looking at another HN submitter's analysis of StackOverflow data, I'd go with Scala. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26610499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26610499