4 ms·

I hear it all the time from friends in the valley. "Do a startup dude, its not risky at all, you'll learn a shitton of stuff, maybe become wealthy beyond your m

by dxbydt 14y ago

I hear it all the time from friends in the valley. "Do a startup dude, its not risky at all, you'll learn a shitton of stuff, maybe become wealthy beyond your means if you get traction,...." So I say, "Ok. But tell you what. I will join your startup f you let me code in Scala/Haskell/SML/<insert favorite immature fp here>" :) Instantly, they'll say, "No way dude! That's too risky! Lets just do it in php/ruby/python/easy-mature-imperative-dynamic-scripting-language" So you want me to take a risk when it comes to my career/finances/life-situation. But you won't even take a risk when it comes to a simple language choice. Despite the fact that you are a technology startup working out of cutting-edge silicon valley, you want to choose the least risky technology/language/framework. So much for risk.

thom 14y ago
I don't see the contradiction between your friends claiming a startup isn't risky, and then refusing to do something they consider risky.
- evincarofautumn 14y ago
  It’s a backward perspective: running a company involves considerably more risk than choosing a programming language.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    And when you're trying to minimize the (already considerable) risk, you don't go around throwing yourself into the first thing you see.
  - thom 14y ago
    Yes, assuming you're right and they're wrong, then you're right and they're wrong, obviously. They're still being entirely consistent.
gtani 14y ago
php, perl, python, ruby and R are the GCD, it's reasonable to expect an experienced dev to be productive in them in 3 days. If you offer to teach the other devs scala or Haskell you'll probably get interest. Probably they won't know what SML is, unless they went to one of the few schools that use OCaml/ML to teach