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Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

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Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#51

Post by stctgion »

rtfeldman wrote: post #33
mooreds wrote: post #2

My question is, how will he feel about this three years from now? When he is trying to hire someone? Or when the folks behind Elm don't update it as often as they should? The problem with unpopular languages is twofold: * lack of talent that can step right in and be effective * lack of resources to push the language forward The first can be remediated by planning to bring new hires up to speed, and just making that i…

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

I'm a little confused. React isn't a language, or at least I thought it wasn't a language. When I hire people I'm not the least bit interested in which JavaScript framework they have already used. I kind of assume that if you can learn one you can learn them all. The idea of labelling yourself a react engineer seems really limiting to me

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#52

Post by desireco42 »

This is common reaction to Elm and especially to Elm.

I also use Elixir and it has great community and everything, but somehow Elm is even more.

All the concerns about 'unpopular' languages, lack of tooling, I feel it is quite the opposite. Elm formatter changed how I work and now I started using it in other languages, Elixir and JS are using it more, or maybe I just started paying more attention.

There are other smaller things that I noticed.

I wish I can work more in Elm, not less.

Also one more thing. Elm made me wish to be way better programmer. You are surrounded by smart people and you just need to show more if you want to keep up.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#53

Post by macintux »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #50

I don't get it. The author didn't address his original concerns, he just said "Elm is awesome", which may be true, but isn't a rebuttal of his previous points, which are condensed here: >You can go through the whole development lifecycle of the app and you’ll rarely encounter a situation where you can’t find a fix online in 5 seconds. Somebody else has already worked out the kinks. My strategy was flawless.

I suspect the missing connection is this: if you encounter a conceptual/technical bug with a popular language/framework, you can find a solution online quickly.

If you write buggy code (especially bugs that don't reveal themselves until live in production) it involves much, much more pain to fix those.

Elm helps significantly with the latter.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#54

Post by LeonidasXIV »

pbiggar wrote: post #43
rtfeldman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

I saw the same at CircleCI with clojure. People want to use functional langs in real systems - we had a lot of Haskell lovers apply because "close enough". Way easier than hiring rails devs. One of the reasons I'm using OCaml/Elm in my new startup :)

> One of the reasons I'm using OCaml/Elm in my new startup

Where do I apply? ;-)

(To prove the point: yes, I'm one of those passion people, moving to Denmark to work in OCaml full-time, before working in Clojure full-time. Now someone give me an Idris job, heh!)

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#55

Post by LeonidasXIV »

stctgion wrote: post #51
rtfeldman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

I'm a little confused. React isn't a language, or at least I thought it wasn't a language. When I hire people I'm not the least bit interested in which JavaScript framework they have already used. I kind of assume that if you can learn one you can learn them all. The idea of labelling yourself a react engineer seems really limiting to me

Where does that specialization stop, reasonably? Isn't this the same with JavaScript? If you have worked with any Algol-derived language you can learn them all.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#56

Post by boubiyeah »

s4vi0r wrote: post #38
rtfeldman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

The communities for languages like Elm are definitely smaller, but they're also "passion languages", if that makes sense. Nobody is learning elm because they've been or feel forced to (like you might with React, eg) or because they needed to maintain a legacy codebase at an old job or something. They're learning it because they're interested/like it, etc. So when it comes time to hire you have a small(er) pool of can…

But are language enthusiasts really better hires in general? I've known many of them who loved the theory and toying with a language but were not any better at producing actual value than the average joe.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#57

Post by oblio »

s4vi0r wrote: post #38
rtfeldman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

The communities for languages like Elm are definitely smaller, but they're also "passion languages", if that makes sense. Nobody is learning elm because they've been or feel forced to (like you might with React, eg) or because they needed to maintain a legacy codebase at an old job or something. They're learning it because they're interested/like it, etc. So when it comes time to hire you have a small(er) pool of can…

F# is a bit surprising, since it’s already on top of a mainstream platform. If all else fails you can glue in C# if you ever find that you really can’t do something with F#.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#58

Post by rtfeldman »

stctgion wrote: post #51
rtfeldman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that in our experience, hiring has gotten way easier for us since we became an Elm shop. We really struggled to hire React engineers (who have a zillion positions to choose among - why would they pick ours?), whereas there seem to be a lot more great programmers who want to use Elm than there are companies hiring for Elm positions. Here's a verbatim quote from a cover letter (one I happened to be reading…

I'm a little confused. React isn't a language, or at least I thought it wasn't a language. When I hire people I'm not the least bit interested in which JavaScript framework they have already used. I kind of assume that if you can learn one you can learn them all. The idea of labelling yourself a react engineer seems really limiting to me

I totally agree - what I should have said is that we struggled to make hires for a React job opening.

We've always been happy to hire good people who don't happen to be familiar with our stack already.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#59

Post by LeonidasXIV »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #37
johnfn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a beginner with functional languages, but isn't the type system completely orthogonal to the fact that Elm is a functional language? You're completely correct, though for whatever reason functional languages almost always have strong type systems.

With the huge exception being Lisp-based languages (closure, scheme, etc....). Heck, Lisp was the first functional language and first one that made full use of dynamic typing.

There is also Erlang and Elixir which while functional aren't typed. There are some static analysis tools though.

Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages

#60

Post by rtfeldman »

LeonidasXIV wrote: post #54
pbiggar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw the same at CircleCI with clojure. People want to use functional langs in real systems - we had a lot of Haskell lovers apply because "close enough". Way easier than hiring rails devs. One of the reasons I'm using OCaml/Elm in my new startup :)

> One of the reasons I'm using OCaml/Elm in my new startup Where do I apply? ;-) (To prove the point: yes, I'm one of those passion people, moving to Denmark to work in OCaml full-time, before working in Clojure full-time. Now someone give me an Idris job, heh!)

I'm not the quoted person, but we hire Elm devs (or people who want to become Elm devs - no prior Elm experience necessary; you can pick it up after joining!) all over the world.

Most of our team is remote, including one from Copenhagen!

http://noredink.com/jobs

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