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I mean in the context of an existing company / team of nontrivial size. Most cases I know of, the uncommon language was there from the days of it being a person
by Jare 5y ago
I mean in the context of an existing company / team of nontrivial size. Most cases I know of, the uncommon language was there from the days of it being a personal or 1-person project. For other types of tech (e.g. infrastructure) sometimes the new/different capabilities are such a defining feature that the lack of familiarity is not as scary. But in programming languages, you can fundamentally do pretty much anything in existing and well known ones.
- throwaway81523 5y agoHave fun writing a web app in assembly language ;). Yes it's been done, but not often, and for good reason. Haskell is sort of a special case: it's best suited for writing compilers, but has been pressed into just about everything else because people are into it for its own sake. Yes if you're running a C++ shop and someone leaves behind a small program in Haskell, you're probably better off reimplementing it than becoming or hiring a Haskell guru just to maintain that thing. That's a question of whether to learn Haskell, not how to learn it. In the case of the linked article, the author was the one who decided to get the company involved with FP, and gave his thoughts on whether it was worth it. I can certainly support the idea that someone juggling all the plates required to keep a company running, has no time to embark on a deep and nerdy self-education project in something as abstruse as FP. Better to keep it at the level of a side interest or hobby until you're comfortable with it, before even thinking of doing anything important with it.