5 ms·

[2004] -- Python is no longer a "comparatively esoteric language" these days. I suppose now this might be an argument for hiring folks using Haskell or the lik

by rst 4y ago

[2004] -- Python is no longer a "comparatively esoteric language" these days. I suppose now this might be an argument for hiring folks using Haskell or the like.

PhoenixReborn 4y ago
Or Rust, which is very popular on HN.
- noobermin 4y ago
  Rust is "not as used" but it has a following who hype it to the point that I've avoided taking time to relearn it just due to the strange vibes I get from their community. These people once mentioned, on twitter, that people who hate systemd are like reactionaries (as in, politically far right), as if a choice of init is a correlative of political ideology. When you view others' preferences for fucking software as so important to your world view that they might as well be nazis[0], you can tell your priorities are not in order. They hardly seem like iconoclasts in that respect, it feels like there is a lot of group mentality there which is strange to me. People in a place with strange groups dynamics might not be aligned with the public outside the group (who are oblivious to the group think since they are just "normies"), and so the group is sure, against the grain in some respect, but that aspect of being separate from the general population is due to adherence to groupthink, not really due to individual eccentricity or originality. Another aspect, rust is being hyped by some big names in Tech, so at this point, rust feels alot more like Java in its early days, so not really niche but just new and before mainstream penetration. [0] Yes, some anti-systemd people literally say Lennart Poeterring is hitler or some nonsense, they are idiots. I just think the software he pushes is not the best.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    The difference is that Java has alway been driven from the enterprise. And so there has been this long investment in frameworks, libraries etc that no one would ever otherwise write. Especially areas like governance, security, compliance, reliability etc. I think Rust is just going to end up just being a better C++ not a true mainstream language.
    - ShredKazoo 4y ago
      See this article: https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/rust_microsoft_c/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/rust_microsoft_c/ * Microsoft Azure's CTO says C and C++ are deprecated * Most-loved language in StackOverflow dev survey for 7 years running * Now in the Linux kernel Sounds like success to me.
    - hgomersall 4y ago
      What's a "true mainstream language"?
    - noobermin 4y ago
      When you say enterprise, who do you mean? Rust is absolutely being pushed by faang et al for example. Just look at the bottom of the Rust foundation page[0]. You do not see this support for things like Nim or Julia[1]. [0] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/ [1] I checked, it looks like intel is funding julia development to some extent. The rest is government research orgs like NSF and DARPA. Okay, that's "large org" support on some scale, although it's clearly because julia is meant for science, not industry.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        FAANG isn't what people typically mean with enterprise, they mean programmers writing internal tools at fortune-500 non-tech organisations. It is very different from FAANG and it is usually boring languages like Java or C#. Think of all the COBOL code they had, those programs are still written and now its Java/C# instead of COBOL.
  - MikeTheGreat 4y ago
    Genuine question: Maybe the pro systemd people meant the word reactionary in it's non-left/right definition? From Wikipedia: "In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society" [0] I've heard people use 'reactionary' to mean "doesn't want things to change", or "wants things to go back to the way they were", which would actually be a pretty reasonable opinion for a pro-systemd person to have about people opposed to systemd. (I'm not saying that systemd is or isn't good/bad, but it was definitely a change, so describing people who wanted to keep initd as reactionary does seem to jibe with the definition of reactionary folks as being people who favor going back to the earlier status quo) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
    - sugersvoltet 4y ago
      I think that's part of it, but I think they primarily mean politically reactionary. I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34543573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34543573
    - noobermin 4y ago
      They didn't. They implied it as a political association. I've since lost the thread unfortunately...
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      If the anti-systemd weenies wanted to be reactionary edge lords and return to the status quo, then they should have said something when it would have made a difference during the ill-fated transition from the simple BSD init system to the steaming pile of shit AT&T System V init system that they only think is "classic" because their first experience with Unix was Linux. It's like saying Nickelback's "Woke Up This Morning" is Classic Rock because you never heard of the Rolling Stones "Start Me Up". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw
  - sugersvoltet 4y ago
    >These people once mentioned, on twitter, that people who hate systemd are like reactionaries (as in, politically far right), as if a choice of init is a correlative of political ideology. When you view others' preferences for fucking software as so important to your world view that they might as well be nazis[0], you can tell your priorities are not in order. I hate that everything is politically-coded nowadays, but, honestly, as much distaste as I feel even writing this, I think they're not entirely wrong / there is something significant underlying that sentiment. Especially post-2014, nearly everything on the internet, including open source technology, is highly entangled with the culture wars. For better or worse, Rust really is left-coded and anti-systemd sentiment really is right-coded. A lot of this stems from the 4chan /g/ (Technology) board's staunch opposition to systemd and Rust + the broad cultural influence 4chan retains to this day. I've been a 4chan regular for over a decade and have seen all sides of this. I know what I'm saying sounds, and is, utterly ridiculous, but this really actually is a "thing", for some reason. Of course most people who like/dislike systemd or Rust aren't politically motivated or even aware of these associations, but there's a surprisingly large chunk of both who are, even if they aren't really consciously thinking of it in this way. It's very easy and understandable to laugh at someone accusing systemd critics of being neo-Nazis - it's the ultimate Godwin smear/cope - but for a variety of reasons the inverse pretty much does hold: alt-right technologists indeed are near-universally actively opposed to systemd, and generally actively hostile towards Rust. The Rust opposition is in large part due to their belief that Rust and Mozilla are associated with trans people and that if you use Rust you are "pro-trans agenda", "cucked", "pro-Jewish", "pro-globohomo". The systemd opposition is less concrete and seems to be more a matter of happenstance + typical conservatism/"if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
    - nequo 4y ago
      Rust is to C what systemd is to /etc/rc. Both C and /etc/rc are defining characteristics of old-school Unix culture, so it kind of makes sense even just on account of that that folks who hate systemd also hate Rust. What puzzles me is that OpenBSD people seem to be quite actively opposed to Rust too. They are the project that disables hyperthreading for security reasons, runs ld to relink the kernel after every boot to shuffle memory addresses, patches all sorts of software to support capability self-limiting with pledge, and so on. And the idea of using a fast memory-safe language is somehow nonsensical to them. It is hard for me to take this opposition as motivated by security.
  - mkl 4y ago
    > These people once mentioned, on twitter, that people who hate systemd are like reactionaries I don't think you are actually referring to the entire Rust community here. Did one person say this on Twitter, and maybe a handful retweet? Besides, what does Rust have to do with systemd? (Not a Rust user, and don't really have an opinion on systemd.)
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Impersonal ad-hominen is a great new way to construct an argument. Or, maybe not that new. "These people to that" without even saying what people you are talking about has been used on politics since forever.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jerf 4y ago
I'm not convinced this advantage is available to harness anymore. A small company can still outrun a larger company via less process, fewer internal entrenched interests, the ability to not have to worry as much about internationalization and other things you need to instantly address large markets and comply with various internal and external regulations, and you could continue this list for quite a while. But $LARGE_CORP, or at least one of the $LARGE_CORPs in your space, is just as likely to be using Python themselves anymore, or some other relatively nice language. Even the bad ol' languages from 2004 have cleaned themselves up a lot since then. There are some potential much more isolated advantages to be harnessed here and there in certain cases by using the correct language in place the wrong one has become entrenched, but I just don't think this particular delta is anywhere near as available, in general, as it used to be.
- awb 4y ago
  Another thing is that back in 2004, a larger % of code was hand written. So, choosing a new language didn’t come with as high a switching cost outside of learning a new syntax. Now, if you deviate from PHP, Python, Node, Rails, etc., to one of the new “esoteric” languages, you have to learn a new language, plus reinvent the wheel in a lot of areas that you’d otherwise be getting for free. So you have brilliant developers working in esoteric languages trying to complete 25-50% more code. Even if you can swim upstream fast enough to compete with highly competent devs working in a more popular language, then you get into hiring / onboarding challenges, documenting and debugging custom features (features that would otherwise be a “solved problem” in other languages), acquisition due diligence, etc., that persistently weighs against you.
  - solatic 4y ago
    > Now, if you deviate... to one of the new “esoteric” languages, you have to... reinvent the wheel in a lot of areas that you’d otherwise be getting for free. I think this is the key concern. The #1 priority is how quickly Engineering can respond to business demands. Maybe the #1 priority instead ought to be culture, and that can be a great approach for Mittelstand-style/small-forever/bootstrapped businesses. But for venture-backed growth-at-all-costs businesses? Porting functionality to an esoteric language does not drive business value. Complain that you have difficulty hiring because you can't find engineers who know the esoteric language, and you're likely to get pressure from your investors to make boring technology choices instead.
nine_k 4y ago
There is a bunch of good "esotetic" languages which can be a similar differentiator in certain areas: Elixir, Zig, Pony, Chapel, Nim, even plain old Elm.

by rst 4y ago

[2004] -- Python is no longer a "comparatively esoteric language" these days. I suppose now this might be an argument for hiring folks using Haskell or the like.

PhoenixReborn 4y ago

Or Rust, which is very popular on HN.

noobermin 4y ago
Rust is "not as used" but it has a following who hype it to the point that I've avoided taking time to relearn it just due to the strange vibes I get from their community. These people once mentioned, on twitter, that people who hate systemd are like reactionaries (as in, politically far right), as if a choice of init is a correlative of political ideology. When you view others' preferences for fucking software as so important to your world view that they might as well be nazis[0], you can tell your priorities are not in order. They hardly seem like iconoclasts in that respect, it feels like there is a lot of group mentality there which is strange to me. People in a place with strange groups dynamics might not be aligned with the public outside the group (who are oblivious to the group think since they are just "normies"), and so the group is sure, against the grain in some respect, but that aspect of being separate from the general population is due to adherence to groupthink, not really due to individual eccentricity or originality. Another aspect, rust is being hyped by some big names in Tech, so at this point, rust feels alot more like Java in its early days, so not really niche but just new and before mainstream penetration. [0] Yes, some anti-systemd people literally say Lennart Poeterring is hitler or some nonsense, they are idiots. I just think the software he pushes is not the best.
- threeseed 4y ago
  The difference is that Java has alway been driven from the enterprise. And so there has been this long investment in frameworks, libraries etc that no one would ever otherwise write. Especially areas like governance, security, compliance, reliability etc. I think Rust is just going to end up just being a better C++ not a true mainstream language.
  - ShredKazoo 4y ago
    See this article: https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/rust_microsoft_c/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/rust_microsoft_c/ * Microsoft Azure's CTO says C and C++ are deprecated * Most-loved language in StackOverflow dev survey for 7 years running * Now in the Linux kernel Sounds like success to me.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    What's a "true mainstream language"?
  - noobermin 4y ago
    When you say enterprise, who do you mean? Rust is absolutely being pushed by faang et al for example. Just look at the bottom of the Rust foundation page[0]. You do not see this support for things like Nim or Julia[1]. [0] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/ [1] I checked, it looks like intel is funding julia development to some extent. The rest is government research orgs like NSF and DARPA. Okay, that's "large org" support on some scale, although it's clearly because julia is meant for science, not industry.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      FAANG isn't what people typically mean with enterprise, they mean programmers writing internal tools at fortune-500 non-tech organisations. It is very different from FAANG and it is usually boring languages like Java or C#. Think of all the COBOL code they had, those programs are still written and now its Java/C# instead of COBOL.
- MikeTheGreat 4y ago
  Genuine question: Maybe the pro systemd people meant the word reactionary in it's non-left/right definition? From Wikipedia: "In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society" [0] I've heard people use 'reactionary' to mean "doesn't want things to change", or "wants things to go back to the way they were", which would actually be a pretty reasonable opinion for a pro-systemd person to have about people opposed to systemd. (I'm not saying that systemd is or isn't good/bad, but it was definitely a change, so describing people who wanted to keep initd as reactionary does seem to jibe with the definition of reactionary folks as being people who favor going back to the earlier status quo) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
  - sugersvoltet 4y ago
    I think that's part of it, but I think they primarily mean politically reactionary. I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34543573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34543573
  - noobermin 4y ago
    They didn't. They implied it as a political association. I've since lost the thread unfortunately...
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    If the anti-systemd weenies wanted to be reactionary edge lords and return to the status quo, then they should have said something when it would have made a difference during the ill-fated transition from the simple BSD init system to the steaming pile of shit AT&T System V init system that they only think is "classic" because their first experience with Unix was Linux. It's like saying Nickelback's "Woke Up This Morning" is Classic Rock because you never heard of the Rolling Stones "Start Me Up". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw
- sugersvoltet 4y ago
  >These people once mentioned, on twitter, that people who hate systemd are like reactionaries (as in, politically far right), as if a choice of init is a correlative of political ideology. When you view others' preferences for fucking software as so important to your world view that they might as well be nazis[0], you can tell your priorities are not in order. I hate that everything is politically-coded nowadays, but, honestly, as much distaste as I feel even writing this, I think they're not entirely wrong / there is something significant underlying that sentiment. Especially post-2014, nearly everything on the internet, including open source technology, is highly entangled with the culture wars. For better or worse, Rust really is left-coded and anti-systemd sentiment really is right-coded. A lot of this stems from the 4chan /g/ (Technology) board's staunch opposition to systemd and Rust + the broad cultural influence 4chan retains to this day. I've been a 4chan regular for over a decade and have seen all sides of this. I know what I'm saying sounds, and is, utterly ridiculous, but this really actually is a "thing", for some reason. Of course most people who like/dislike systemd or Rust aren't politically motivated or even aware of these associations, but there's a surprisingly large chunk of both who are, even if they aren't really consciously thinking of it in this way. It's very easy and understandable to laugh at someone accusing systemd critics of being neo-Nazis - it's the ultimate Godwin smear/cope - but for a variety of reasons the inverse pretty much does hold: alt-right technologists indeed are near-universally actively opposed to systemd, and generally actively hostile towards Rust. The Rust opposition is in large part due to their belief that Rust and Mozilla are associated with trans people and that if you use Rust you are "pro-trans agenda", "cucked", "pro-Jewish", "pro-globohomo". The systemd opposition is less concrete and seems to be more a matter of happenstance + typical conservatism/"if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
  - nequo 4y ago
    Rust is to C what systemd is to /etc/rc. Both C and /etc/rc are defining characteristics of old-school Unix culture, so it kind of makes sense even just on account of that that folks who hate systemd also hate Rust. What puzzles me is that OpenBSD people seem to be quite actively opposed to Rust too. They are the project that disables hyperthreading for security reasons, runs ld to relink the kernel after every boot to shuffle memory addresses, patches all sorts of software to support capability self-limiting with pledge, and so on. And the idea of using a fast memory-safe language is somehow nonsensical to them. It is hard for me to take this opposition as motivated by security.
- mkl 4y ago
  > These people once mentioned, on twitter, that people who hate systemd are like reactionaries I don't think you are actually referring to the entire Rust community here. Did one person say this on Twitter, and maybe a handful retweet? Besides, what does Rust have to do with systemd? (Not a Rust user, and don't really have an opinion on systemd.)
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Impersonal ad-hominen is a great new way to construct an argument. Or, maybe not that new. "These people to that" without even saying what people you are talking about has been used on politics since forever.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jerf 4y ago

I'm not convinced this advantage is available to harness anymore. A small company can still outrun a larger company via less process, fewer internal entrenched interests, the ability to not have to worry as much about internationalization and other things you need to instantly address large markets and comply with various internal and external regulations, and you could continue this list for quite a while. But $LARGE_CORP, or at least one of the $LARGE_CORPs in your space, is just as likely to be using Python themselves anymore, or some other relatively nice language. Even the bad ol' languages from 2004 have cleaned themselves up a lot since then. There are some potential much more isolated advantages to be harnessed here and there in certain cases by using the correct language in place the wrong one has become entrenched, but I just don't think this particular delta is anywhere near as available, in general, as it used to be.

awb 4y ago
Another thing is that back in 2004, a larger % of code was hand written. So, choosing a new language didn’t come with as high a switching cost outside of learning a new syntax. Now, if you deviate from PHP, Python, Node, Rails, etc., to one of the new “esoteric” languages, you have to learn a new language, plus reinvent the wheel in a lot of areas that you’d otherwise be getting for free. So you have brilliant developers working in esoteric languages trying to complete 25-50% more code. Even if you can swim upstream fast enough to compete with highly competent devs working in a more popular language, then you get into hiring / onboarding challenges, documenting and debugging custom features (features that would otherwise be a “solved problem” in other languages), acquisition due diligence, etc., that persistently weighs against you.
- solatic 4y ago
  > Now, if you deviate... to one of the new “esoteric” languages, you have to... reinvent the wheel in a lot of areas that you’d otherwise be getting for free. I think this is the key concern. The #1 priority is how quickly Engineering can respond to business demands. Maybe the #1 priority instead ought to be culture, and that can be a great approach for Mittelstand-style/small-forever/bootstrapped businesses. But for venture-backed growth-at-all-costs businesses? Porting functionality to an esoteric language does not drive business value. Complain that you have difficulty hiring because you can't find engineers who know the esoteric language, and you're likely to get pressure from your investors to make boring technology choices instead.

nine_k 4y ago

There is a bunch of good "esotetic" languages which can be a similar differentiator in certain areas: Elixir, Zig, Pony, Chapel, Nim, even plain old Elm.