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If you can’t get buy-in, you can’t get buy-in. Some companies won’t allow you to write whatever you want, Lisp or otherwise. I don’t suggest writing Lisp is pos

If you can’t get buy-in, you can’t get buy-in. Some companies won’t allow you to write whatever you want, Lisp or otherwise. I don’t suggest writing Lisp is possible anywhere, just that it’s perfectly attainable and within one’s power to have a career of which Lisp is a significant part if you decide that should be a priority. If working at $COOL_COMPANY that only allows Python due to CTO-mandated policy is your priority, then there’s not much that can be done to accomplish that and writing Lisp. Sometimes, also, you have to be more persuasive than “let’s use lisp it’s cool”. Implement a piece of code as a side project that solves a real problem that people care about at your company. Don’t shove it in people’s faces or rogue commit it to production. Ask people about it and have a plan to integrate it and support it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. As professional software engineers, our job is to solve technical software problems in exchange for a wage. Some of these technical problems come in the form of giant pieces of software that you’re asked to chip away at. Others come in the form of greenfield implementation work. Some are somewhere in between. Some of these projects have 2 programmers, and others 2,000. Where on these spectra you’re being paid to contribute makes a lot of difference in how much sway you have for foundational technological choices on specific projects.

bitwize 5y ago
> Implement a piece of code as a side project that solves a real problem that people care about at your company. Yeah, been there, done that, got in trouble for it. I suspect it's that way at most companies.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- parafactual 5y ago
  Why did you get in trouble? (That is, what was the stated reason)
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    Not OP, but "if you leave, nobody else will be able to maintain it"
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Pretty much this. That and "No one else here knows Lisp. How are you going to collaborate on it? We do software development as a team effort, and you should be pairing/mobbing on everything you write."
kingaillas 5y ago
A colleague implemented a small utility in Clojure (~50 lines long) that worked great. It led to a mandate that allowable languages are: C/C++, C#, Python. The colleague left 4-5 years ago for an external job. Part of the problem was the utility needed some enhancements/extensions and nobody wanted to continue it in Clojure. I think it was rewritten as an overhaul/revamp of the larger project it was part of. I also left but for a different internal position where I can write C/C++, Java, Rust, Python (no C# in new group because new job is writing software to run on linux, and our IT does not support dotnet core - in addition there is no demand from us because we have a zillion lines of code all written before any dotnet on linux existed). EDIT: Old group can use C# because that work was on Windows (just to clarify C# wasn't dropped company wide). Anyway, some orgs might be more receptive to "exotic" languages but I know where I work you'd have to fight really hard to do it. I was pleasantly surprised to see Rust got the thumbs up.

bitwize 5y ago

> Implement a piece of code as a side project that solves a real problem that people care about at your company. Yeah, been there, done that, got in trouble for it. I suspect it's that way at most companies.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
parafactual 5y ago
Why did you get in trouble? (That is, what was the stated reason)
- aidenn0 5y ago
  Not OP, but "if you leave, nobody else will be able to maintain it"
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Pretty much this. That and "No one else here knows Lisp. How are you going to collaborate on it? We do software development as a team effort, and you should be pairing/mobbing on everything you write."

kingaillas 5y ago

A colleague implemented a small utility in Clojure (~50 lines long) that worked great. It led to a mandate that allowable languages are: C/C++, C#, Python. The colleague left 4-5 years ago for an external job. Part of the problem was the utility needed some enhancements/extensions and nobody wanted to continue it in Clojure. I think it was rewritten as an overhaul/revamp of the larger project it was part of. I also left but for a different internal position where I can write C/C++, Java, Rust, Python (no C# in new group because new job is writing software to run on linux, and our IT does not support dotnet core - in addition there is no demand from us because we have a zillion lines of code all written before any dotnet on linux existed). EDIT: Old group can use C# because that work was on Windows (just to clarify C# wasn't dropped company wide). Anyway, some orgs might be more receptive to "exotic" languages but I know where I work you'd have to fight really hard to do it. I was pleasantly surprised to see Rust got the thumbs up.