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That argument implies that you would actually see these languages in communities with large SV style salaries which isn’t the case. It turns out that “brick la

That argument implies that you would actually see these languages in communities with large SV style salaries which isn’t the case. It turns out that “brick layer” languages are also easier to understand not just for the next person taking over but yourself after a few months. That’s valuable even to yourself unless you value your time at 0.

pjmlp 1y ago
Why? The less the VCs have to spend with employees the better. See the famous quote about Go's target audience, or 2000's Java being a blue colour job language. Not only do languages like Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk require a people to actually get them, a bit like the meme with burritos in Haskell, they suffered from bad decisions from companies pushing them. Lisp suffered with Xerox PARC, Symbolics and TI losing against UNIX workstations, followed by the first AI Winter, which also took Japan's 5th project with Prolog alongside with it. Smalltalk was getting alright outside Xerox PARC, with big name backers like IBM, where it had a major role on OS/2, similar to .NET on Windows, until Java came out, and IBM decided to pivot all their Smalltalk efforts into Java, Eclipse has roots on Visual Age for Smalltalk.
- gjvc 1y ago
  psst blue "collar" :-)
- vlovich123 1y ago
  Your entire post makes the claim that it’s because the vast majority of programmers get paid the same as other roles and that’s why there’s the language selection pressure there is. High salary jobs would be the exception yet they also make pragmatic choices about languages. It’s a two sided market problem - employers want popular languages to be used so they have a talent pool to hire from and don’t end up having a hard time finding talent (which then also implies something about the salary of course but it’s a secondary effect). Employees look to learn languages that are popular and are easy to find employment in. Not sure if you’ve spent any time with them but VCs and investors more broadly generally could give two fucks about the language a business is built in. There are exceptions but generally they just want to see the business opportunity and that you’re the team to go do it. There’s a reason it’s difficult to find employment with Haskell or Lisp or other niche languages and it’s because they’re niche languages that “you have to get” - not easy to learn and generally not as easy to work with as “popular” languages that see significantly more man hours dedicated to building out tooling and libraries. There’s also secondary things like runtime performance which is quite poor for Haskell or Lisp if you’re a beginner and even people familiar with the language can struggle to right equivalent programs that don’t use significantly more memory or CPU. And finally the languages can just be inherently more difficult and alien (Haskell) which attracts a niche and guarantees it remains a niche language that attracts a particular kind of person.

pjmlp 1y ago

Why? The less the VCs have to spend with employees the better. See the famous quote about Go's target audience, or 2000's Java being a blue colour job language. Not only do languages like Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk require a people to actually get them, a bit like the meme with burritos in Haskell, they suffered from bad decisions from companies pushing them. Lisp suffered with Xerox PARC, Symbolics and TI losing against UNIX workstations, followed by the first AI Winter, which also took Japan's 5th project with Prolog alongside with it. Smalltalk was getting alright outside Xerox PARC, with big name backers like IBM, where it had a major role on OS/2, similar to .NET on Windows, until Java came out, and IBM decided to pivot all their Smalltalk efforts into Java, Eclipse has roots on Visual Age for Smalltalk.

gjvc 1y ago
psst blue "collar" :-)
vlovich123 1y ago
Your entire post makes the claim that it’s because the vast majority of programmers get paid the same as other roles and that’s why there’s the language selection pressure there is. High salary jobs would be the exception yet they also make pragmatic choices about languages. It’s a two sided market problem - employers want popular languages to be used so they have a talent pool to hire from and don’t end up having a hard time finding talent (which then also implies something about the salary of course but it’s a secondary effect). Employees look to learn languages that are popular and are easy to find employment in. Not sure if you’ve spent any time with them but VCs and investors more broadly generally could give two fucks about the language a business is built in. There are exceptions but generally they just want to see the business opportunity and that you’re the team to go do it. There’s a reason it’s difficult to find employment with Haskell or Lisp or other niche languages and it’s because they’re niche languages that “you have to get” - not easy to learn and generally not as easy to work with as “popular” languages that see significantly more man hours dedicated to building out tooling and libraries. There’s also secondary things like runtime performance which is quite poor for Haskell or Lisp if you’re a beginner and even people familiar with the language can struggle to right equivalent programs that don’t use significantly more memory or CPU. And finally the languages can just be inherently more difficult and alien (Haskell) which attracts a niche and guarantees it remains a niche language that attracts a particular kind of person.