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It's surprising to me that effective knowledge of C and/or C++ is the stumbling block for contributing to the core of the JVM. I work at a company with one lar
by morelisp 4y ago
It's surprising to me that effective knowledge of C and/or C++ is the stumbling block for contributing to the core of the JVM.
I work at a company with one large C++ codebase, and also many Go projects where C and C++ knowledge are helpful. We have trouble hiring good C++ developers, because our candidate pool starts as "people who want to write web applications".
But if you're already restricted to people who want to work on an extremely mature compiler, VM, and JIT - is lack of C knowledge really what's making it hard to hire people? These are people who are likely to end up reading kernel code and C-defined ABI documentation and etc. etc. even if the codebase is 100% Java...
- lmm 4y agoThe people who believe in and care about Java tend to be Java people; C-oriented people tend to be rather anti-Java.
- kaba0 4y agoWriting state-of-the art runtimes is probably one of the hardest CS fields. They are way above this “your language sucks” category.
- lmm 4y agoPeople are human; we get petty and tribal at every level. And ever putting all that aside, if you genuinely believe that one kind of programming or another is the way forward then of course you're going to be more interested in working on technologies that support that.
- still_grokking 4y agoEven you're maybe right about "the C people" (most of I'm meet were indeed the kind of "there's nothing besides C") this doesn't seem to be relevant here. The JVM is written in C++, not C. Also there is a large chunk of people (like me) who don't care about Java (the language) but very much about the JVM (and to some degree also about the Java ecosystem). I'm a Scala developer. But I'm also interested lately in Rust (and to some degree C++, as both languages are related), 'cause, you know, max performance and full control, and such. So at least when it comes to interests there is some pool of people for sure who would like to look into the low-level JVM internals.
- signaru 4y agoThe ideal hire would be "language implementation" people. There's a tendency for these to be C/C++ people because these offer conveniences in implementations. But they would also care about other languages and how they work.
- wiseowise 4y ago> We have trouble hiring good C++ developers, because our candidate pool starts as "people who want to write web applications". You have trouble hiring good C++ developers, because you don’t pay enough.
- moralestapia 4y agoNow that you touch on that and since I'm considering a role in C/C++ that came up to me. How much is a good salary for that if you're remote (but US based) and have about 10 years of decent experience (plus a PhD in CS).
- Koshkin 4y agoA good pay should cover your expenses, vacations and such, a bit of retirement savings, and leave you with some disposable money as well; otherwise, it depends on how much you want the job. (It's the same old supply vs. demand kind of thing.)
- samus 4y agoThat's a minimal pay in a field where the job market is kind of in favor of the employees.
- gameman144 4y agoIn my mind, this feels more like "acceptable pay". Excluding absolute emergencies, I'd never take any job as a grown adult that didn't check all these boxes.
- morelisp 4y agoAlso true, but not the only reason nor a particularly relevant response.
- samus 4y agoHigh salaries won't magically make experienced C/C++ programmers appear out of thin air.
- kaba0 4y ago> It's surprising to me that effective knowledge of C and/or C++ is the stumbling block for contributing to the core of the JVM. Parent is just talking out of his/her ass.