3 ms·

I run an OCaml project, but I would reject interview candidates who say they are primarily interested in the project because of OCaml. It's definitely a negati

by rwmj 4y ago

I run an OCaml project, but I would reject interview candidates who say they are primarily interested in the project because of OCaml. It's definitely a negative factor in the evaluation. I don't need someone adding baroque functional programming purity into a working project with real customers and regular developers. Plus there's a vast amount of C code which is not going anywhere, so I assume they would hate dealing with that.

neodypsis 4y ago
One can enjoy OCaml while also being proficient in C and C++. I don't follow your logic.
- rwmj 4y ago
  It's more that it's a negative indicator. From time to time when we advertise a job we get a candidate straight from a university research background who can't wait to tell us how they love functional programming. We always pass on these.
doodpants 4y ago
There's a well-known phenomenon where a person who has just learned a programming language will tend to write code that resembles the idioms of a different language that they have more exprience with, until they learn to write properly idiomatic code in the new language. For example, someone coming to Python from Java might write so-called "Java-flavored-Python" until they become more familiar with how things are generally done by experienced Python coders. Your comment comes across to me as "I run a project written in C-flavored-OCaml, and the last thing I want is for someone to come along and pollute it with properly idiomatic OCaml". Because otherwise, if you had good reasons to choose that language, and your code takes advantage of the language's strengths, wouldn't the code already be "baroque" to some degree? Why would you assume a new person would make it worse?
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  That's not what it sounds like to me at all. To me it sounds like they have some FFI into C and that OCaml may just be a part of the larger project. There is nothing that indicates that they write "C-flavored-OCaml."
- rwmj 4y ago
  You can look at the project yourself: https://github.com/libguestfs/virt-v2v https://github.com/libguestfs/virt-v2v I've been writing OCaml for 20+ years and C for 40 years, and other contributors have similar decades-long experience in programming.
zem 4y ago
I'd likely fail that filter, but not for love of baroque fp purity. my career has largely tended to be at the bottom of the stack, building the bricks that other team members use to build features, and I would be excited about ocaml because I think it gives you good tools to build solid and composable components. I would also do good work in the C part of the codebase if needed, I just wouldn't be excited about getting to work in C.

by rwmj 4y ago

neodypsis 4y ago

One can enjoy OCaml while also being proficient in C and C++. I don't follow your logic.

rwmj 4y ago
It's more that it's a negative indicator. From time to time when we advertise a job we get a candidate straight from a university research background who can't wait to tell us how they love functional programming. We always pass on these.

doodpants 4y ago

There's a well-known phenomenon where a person who has just learned a programming language will tend to write code that resembles the idioms of a different language that they have more exprience with, until they learn to write properly idiomatic code in the new language. For example, someone coming to Python from Java might write so-called "Java-flavored-Python" until they become more familiar with how things are generally done by experienced Python coders. Your comment comes across to me as "I run a project written in C-flavored-OCaml, and the last thing I want is for someone to come along and pollute it with properly idiomatic OCaml". Because otherwise, if you had good reasons to choose that language, and your code takes advantage of the language's strengths, wouldn't the code already be "baroque" to some degree? Why would you assume a new person would make it worse?

satvikpendem 4y ago
That's not what it sounds like to me at all. To me it sounds like they have some FFI into C and that OCaml may just be a part of the larger project. There is nothing that indicates that they write "C-flavored-OCaml."
rwmj 4y ago
You can look at the project yourself: https://github.com/libguestfs/virt-v2v https://github.com/libguestfs/virt-v2v I've been writing OCaml for 20+ years and C for 40 years, and other contributors have similar decades-long experience in programming.

zem 4y ago

I'd likely fail that filter, but not for love of baroque fp purity. my career has largely tended to be at the bottom of the stack, building the bricks that other team members use to build features, and I would be excited about ocaml because I think it gives you good tools to build solid and composable components. I would also do good work in the C part of the codebase if needed, I just wouldn't be excited about getting to work in C.