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Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#141

Post by babayega2 »

scardine wrote: post #81

Python saved my but 10 years ago when I was transitioning from operations to be a full time software developer. Back then I made the wrong technology choice for a project (OpenLazlo, a discontinued RIA platform on the frontend and PHP at the backend) and the schedule was slipping fast. Then I tried Django and it really stands for the motto "The web framework for perfectionists with deadlines". I'm yet to find a langu…

+10 : quick prototyping!

I always do develop quickly a Django project (1 day) with the Django Import-export module [0] so that I can show to the client the data he wants in an Excel file or else... And most of my developers friends (php...) are blown away how I manage to do that ( i.e a perfectly working admin, nice landing page and complex import-export features). And with Python, you can even show your code to the non tech client and most of the time I've found that he really "guess" the Python code more than a Js code. I'm always delighted when a client makes suggestions on my python code.

[0]: https://django-import-export.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#143

Post by votr »

jnbiche wrote: post #133
votr wrote: post #91

Clojure. Before learning Clojure, I didn't even have a career. I just wanted to get into software development. But at the time, all I knew was a bit of Python. And while I could've learned Java, I figured that being yet another Java programmer in the marketplace, but with no experience and a liberal arts degree, was probably going to get me nowhere. So I decided I had to learn something emerging. Something where ther…

Are you employed remotely? Someone asked a question on Ask HN a few days back about whether learning a less common language made remote work more feasible. So this is kind of a follow-up to that question.

Nope. Still commuting. But becoming remote is my number one goal.

At the moment, I have a client outside of work (ReactJS stuff), and am negotiating a remote gig with a company in California.

I agree that exotic technologies give you a leg up.

My stance is also that, if you're pushing for remote, then by definition you need to justify why you're a better choice than your remote competition who may live in lower COL areas.

If you're remote, then why should someone pay you a high salary vs. paying a lower one to that bright guy in Romania, who can still live like a king?

That's where marketing, differentiation, and service come in. But these are just my guesses.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#144

Post by JackFr »

I'm a Scala dev now, but when I was a Java dev, I went and learned Python, then Ruby and Rails. Never left Java (well until I got into Scala) but learning those absolutely changed the way I wrote code, and with respect to web dev finally gave a clear picture that was near impossible to see in the Java ecosystem.

(Also using IntelliJ IDEA for the first time in 2002 - opened my eyes as to what was possible for an IDE, and what was possible to do with Java.)

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#145

Post by shados »

kzisme wrote: post #132
cagataygurturk wrote: post #13

My wow moment was when I quit trying to do everything in the language I was comfortable with (PHP) and became a language agnostic engineer. Since then (2 years ago) now I can write in 3 programming language, nobody can realize that I am new at these languages and I know that I can pick a new language up now in a very short time. I had to study so much in these last 2 years but since I love engineering it was funny ra…

I'm just starting my career as a dev, but my first language in school was C++. At work I use C# - but I hope to keep learning more languages. The main thing I was worried about initially was being stuck with one language my whole career. Anyone else ever feel that way?

With the way the market is, unless you stay at one job forever, its actually hard to stay with the same language... the world changes, opportunities change, your interests change...you'd have to try very hard to stick to one language.

Now, on that topic, what's much harder than learning multiple languages, is learning multiple language paradigms. If you have a C++ background, learning C#, Java, Swift, JavaScript, whatever is pretty easy.

Learning Haskell, ML, Elm, F#, Clojure, etc...now that will make your mind bend and spin for a bit. Those aren't nearly as common in a work environment, but you can gain a lot from learning at least one.

This is kind of similar to how if you're an english speaker, learning another european language isn't nearly as interesting as learning a CJK.

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#146

Post by willismichael »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #48

Made a lot of money with Pascal, then Perl. Common Lisp and Haskell turned me into a grumpy, unemployable mess. Terrible ROI. I went 180 and now I'm starting to appreciate (and making money with) Go.

Could you clarify what you mean by "grumpy, unemployable mess"? I'm assuming that you mean that you got a glimpse of what software development could be like, but didn't find any traction in the industry?

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#147

Post by votr »

heyts wrote: post #106
votr wrote: post #91

Clojure. Before learning Clojure, I didn't even have a career. I just wanted to get into software development. But at the time, all I knew was a bit of Python. And while I could've learned Java, I figured that being yet another Java programmer in the marketplace, but with no experience and a liberal arts degree, was probably going to get me nowhere. So I decided I had to learn something emerging. Something where ther…

I'm very interested in learning Clojure. Would you care to share more of your experience learning the language in terms of learning curve, useful libraries or just general tips. I'm sure that would benefit the community at large.

I approached learning Clojure the way I approach learning everything else. I survey the resources available, then pick the two best books. Ideally, I want them to come at it from different perspectives. e.g. one may place an emphasis on doing stuff with Clojure while another may be more about functional programming.

At the time, they were:

https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick-eboo...

https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Clojure-Michael-Fogus/dp/16172914...

I then wrote a data processing app in Clojure; consuming financial data and finding patterns in it.

My suggestions are: 1) If this is your first time learning a functionally-oriented language, clear your mind from any kind of assumptions picked up from other languages.

2) Get a handle on the core tenets of functional programming: immutability, purity, composition, and functions as objects. If you know Javascript, then a lot of this stuff may already be familiar to you. JS is underrated in that department imo.

3) To me, writing programs with Clojure is akin to playing with Lego. You write your base functions, then higher-level functions which use those base functions, and so on. Functions all the way down.

4) Write something with it; it'll force you to decompose your program and think functionally.

Clojure is a simple, opinionated language. I don't think you'll have a hard time picking it up at all. The hard part will be to think in a manner amenable to it.

These days, I think Clojurescript has overtaken Clojure in terms of traction, so if you're into webdev, then CJS would be a natural next step.

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#148

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

jnbiche wrote: post #135
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #113

About 2 years ago I discovered a programming language called K. It's a very unusual-looking, extremely terse language in the APL family. It just "clicked" for me. I enjoy the ability to experiment with different algorithms and approaches in a few keystrokes, and learning to think in a "vector-oriented" fashion has opened my eyes to much more elegant formulations of old problems. There aren't many extensive tutorial m…

At the risk of spamming the same question to everyone who comments here with a less common language, are you employed remotely? Someone asked a question on Ask HN a few days back about whether learning a less common language made remote work more feasible. Do you get many remote opportunities as a known K programmer?

I have done some remote work related to K, but it seems that most of the places that are hiring K programmers want them physically located near finance hubs. For my current job I had to relocate to NYC. It's a bit of a mixed bag, and not my ideal place to live in the long term, but I am very much enjoying working at this company.

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#149

Post by oblio »

cagataygurturk wrote: post #57
jjrumi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I had to study so much in these last 2 years" --> Could you give a glimpse on what have you studied/read? I'm very interested. Thanks!

It is not like studying a course in a organised way.. Luckily we switched to microservices architecture in my company and thus many stuff had to be rewritten. The old monolithic application was PHP and PHP was deprecated for new projects company wide. So I and my team picked GO, JAVA and Node.js for different microservices we are responsible for. (Mainly JAVA and GO, we deprecated then Node.js unofficially in our tea…

> Specifically for JAVA [...] abandoned enterprise technologies

> [...]

> How such a simple language like Javascript could become so complicated?

;)

Re: Ask HN: What cool development languages/tools changed your career?

#150

Post by tzhenghao »

Vim. I was first introduced to this text editor back in college. It has super weird navigation rules and editing modes that would easily deter many beginners. 70-80% of my course mates gave up on it and chose something else that worked more like a normal text editor such as Sublime/Atom.

It took me several months to develop that muscle memory to increase my productivity. Today, I can log in remotely to my AWS instance, edit a few files and do it all without leaving the terminal. I hear similar benefits on the Emacs camp too.

The steep learning curve was well worth it. I don't think I've shipped any source file without opening/editing it on Vim before.

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