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It would be really embarrassing to use one of the most popular, time-tested languages. Even if we decided to use Zig for everything, hiring for less popular la

It would be really embarrassing to use one of the most popular, time-tested languages. Even if we decided to use Zig for everything, hiring for less popular languages like Zig, lua, or Rust is significantly harder. There are no developers with 20 years experience in Zig

juliangmp 1y ago
You don't need developers with 20 years of experience in a specific language. Any decent engineer must be able to work with other languages and tools. What you're looking for is someone with experience building systems in your area of expertise. And even then, experience is often a poor substitute for competence.
- hiimkeks 1y ago
  > You don't need developers with 20 years of experience in a specific language. You may in trivia quiz languages that have more features than anyone can learn in a lifetime
  - juliangmp 1y ago
    I assume you're referring to C++ with all of its... features. And yeah, its a mess. Even when you think you have a good understanding of at least one part of the language, you'll stumble across some small section of cppreference that makes you question your entire career.
shadowgovt 1y ago
Being at a firm where the decision to use C++ was made, the thought process went something like this: "We're going to need to fit parts of this into very constrained architectures." "Right, so we need a language that compiles directly to machine code with no runtime interpretation." "Which one should we use?" "What about Rust?" "I know zero Rust developers." "What about C++?" "I know twenty C++ developers and am confident we can hire three of them tomorrow." The calculus at the corporate level really isn't more complicated than that. And the thing about twenty C++ developers is that they're very good at using the tools to stamp the undefined behavior out of the system because they've been doing it their entire careers.
- kragen 1y ago
  How does someone know twenty C++ developers and zero C developers though?
  - flkenosad 1y ago
    Born in the 80s.
    - Jtsummers 1y ago
      That wouldn't stop someone from knowing any C developers. It's still a common language today, and was more common when those 80s kids would have become adults and entered the industry.
      - kragen 1y ago
        Maybe they use only Microsoft Windows?
      - PaulHoule 1y ago
        As a kid in the 1980s I thought something was a bit off about K&R, kind of a discontinuity. Notably C succeeded where PL/I failed but by 1990 or so you started to see actual specs written by adults such as Common Lisp and Java where you really can start at the beginning and work to the end and not have to skip forward or read the spec twice. That discontinuity is structural though to C and also C++ and you find it in most books about C++ and in little weird anomalies like the way typedefs force the parser to have access to the symbol table. Sure C was a huge advance in portability but C and C++ represent a transitional form between an age where you could cleanly spec a special purpose language like COBOL or FORTRAN but not quite spec a general systems programming language and one in which you could. C++, thus, piles a huge amount of complexity on top of a foundation which is almost but not quite right.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    Probably they know C but the project is complex enough to warrant something else. Personally I'd rather C++ not exist and it's just C and Rust, but I don't have a magic wand.

juliangmp 1y ago

You don't need developers with 20 years of experience in a specific language. Any decent engineer must be able to work with other languages and tools. What you're looking for is someone with experience building systems in your area of expertise. And even then, experience is often a poor substitute for competence.

hiimkeks 1y ago
> You don't need developers with 20 years of experience in a specific language. You may in trivia quiz languages that have more features than anyone can learn in a lifetime
- juliangmp 1y ago
  I assume you're referring to C++ with all of its... features. And yeah, its a mess. Even when you think you have a good understanding of at least one part of the language, you'll stumble across some small section of cppreference that makes you question your entire career.

shadowgovt 1y ago

Being at a firm where the decision to use C++ was made, the thought process went something like this: "We're going to need to fit parts of this into very constrained architectures." "Right, so we need a language that compiles directly to machine code with no runtime interpretation." "Which one should we use?" "What about Rust?" "I know zero Rust developers." "What about C++?" "I know twenty C++ developers and am confident we can hire three of them tomorrow." The calculus at the corporate level really isn't more complicated than that. And the thing about twenty C++ developers is that they're very good at using the tools to stamp the undefined behavior out of the system because they've been doing it their entire careers.

kragen 1y ago
How does someone know twenty C++ developers and zero C developers though?
- flkenosad 1y ago
  Born in the 80s.
  - Jtsummers 1y ago
    That wouldn't stop someone from knowing any C developers. It's still a common language today, and was more common when those 80s kids would have become adults and entered the industry.
    - kragen 1y ago
      Maybe they use only Microsoft Windows?
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      As a kid in the 1980s I thought something was a bit off about K&R, kind of a discontinuity. Notably C succeeded where PL/I failed but by 1990 or so you started to see actual specs written by adults such as Common Lisp and Java where you really can start at the beginning and work to the end and not have to skip forward or read the spec twice. That discontinuity is structural though to C and also C++ and you find it in most books about C++ and in little weird anomalies like the way typedefs force the parser to have access to the symbol table. Sure C was a huge advance in portability but C and C++ represent a transitional form between an age where you could cleanly spec a special purpose language like COBOL or FORTRAN but not quite spec a general systems programming language and one in which you could. C++, thus, piles a huge amount of complexity on top of a foundation which is almost but not quite right.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  Probably they know C but the project is complex enough to warrant something else. Personally I'd rather C++ not exist and it's just C and Rust, but I don't have a magic wand.