4 ms·

Times change. Interestingly enough, "fringe" languages were breathed new life with introduction of LLVM, and Haskell is no longer research project, so there are

by miga 14y ago

Times change. Interestingly enough, "fringe" languages were breathed new life with introduction of LLVM, and Haskell is no longer research project, so there are industry job offers there too. And we know what happened with "winners" within a wave of dynamic languages: JavaScript, Python and Ruby developers are quite often paid higher wages, than old-style C programmers.

doktrin 14y ago
This is sort of like pointing out the obvious, but that's just a change in the market, and has comparatively little to do with the languages themselves. There's no reason C programmers can't easily transition into web development. The inverse, assuming that the market for C development will remain static is just illogical (likewise for the current in-demand languages). Developers are developers IMHO. Languages are tools. What tool a developer uses is incidental and inevitably subject to change.
- miga 14y ago
  Tool is subject to change, particularly when change looks like an upgrade.
coldtea 14y ago
>Haskell is no longer research project, so there are industry job offers there too. Well, there are far fewer Haskell job offers than Haskell programmers. >And we know what happened with "winners" within a wave of dynamic languages: JavaScript, Python and Ruby developers are quite often paid higher wages, than old-style C programmers. Are they? I'm not so sure a competent C programmers earns less than a Javascript/Python/Ruby guy.
- miga 14y ago
  An example HN article about that: http://firstround.com/article/The-inside-story-of-how-382-recruiters-pursued-an-imaginary-engineer http://firstround.com/article/The-inside-story-of-how-382-re...
BruceIV 14y ago
Fringe languages are fine. Just remember the downsides when you're thinking about using them in production.
cwzwarich 14y ago
As much as I like LLVM (I sometimes work on it for a living) I don't think you can ascribe the rise in popularity of "fringe" languages to LLVM. Are there even any languages whose rise to prominence occurred with an LLVM implementation?
- untothebreach 14y ago
  Depends upon what you mean by "rise to prominence." It is not widely used (yet), but [Rust](http://rust-lang.org http://rust-lang.org) is a former research project that is now being developed/used by a major tech company (mozilla) to implementation next-generation web browser. It's main (only) implementation is built on LLVM.
dagw 14y ago
JavaScript, Python and Ruby developers are quite often paid higher wages Based on what I've seen, good C++ programmers working in areas like finance and aerospace still command higher wages than most JavaScript or Ruby devs.

by miga 14y ago

doktrin 14y ago

This is sort of like pointing out the obvious, but that's just a change in the market, and has comparatively little to do with the languages themselves. There's no reason C programmers can't easily transition into web development. The inverse, assuming that the market for C development will remain static is just illogical (likewise for the current in-demand languages). Developers are developers IMHO. Languages are tools. What tool a developer uses is incidental and inevitably subject to change.

miga 14y ago
Tool is subject to change, particularly when change looks like an upgrade.

coldtea 14y ago

>Haskell is no longer research project, so there are industry job offers there too. Well, there are far fewer Haskell job offers than Haskell programmers. >And we know what happened with "winners" within a wave of dynamic languages: JavaScript, Python and Ruby developers are quite often paid higher wages, than old-style C programmers. Are they? I'm not so sure a competent C programmers earns less than a Javascript/Python/Ruby guy.

miga 14y ago
An example HN article about that: http://firstround.com/article/The-inside-story-of-how-382-recruiters-pursued-an-imaginary-engineer http://firstround.com/article/The-inside-story-of-how-382-re...

BruceIV 14y ago

Fringe languages are fine. Just remember the downsides when you're thinking about using them in production.

cwzwarich 14y ago

As much as I like LLVM (I sometimes work on it for a living) I don't think you can ascribe the rise in popularity of "fringe" languages to LLVM. Are there even any languages whose rise to prominence occurred with an LLVM implementation?

untothebreach 14y ago
Depends upon what you mean by "rise to prominence." It is not widely used (yet), but [Rust](http://rust-lang.org http://rust-lang.org) is a former research project that is now being developed/used by a major tech company (mozilla) to implementation next-generation web browser. It's main (only) implementation is built on LLVM.

dagw 14y ago

JavaScript, Python and Ruby developers are quite often paid higher wages Based on what I've seen, good C++ programmers working in areas like finance and aerospace still command higher wages than most JavaScript or Ruby devs.