Programmers who believe just one stack is the right way to do things aren't probably the best hires long term.
While Tech evolves, being able to work with what exists and the future remains incredibly valuable.
Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
151–160 of 321 posts
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#152Earlier 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 :)
Can confirm, I was one of them ;)
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#153One of the main problems with unpopular languages (which this article completely ignores) is growing the team, and hiring in general. In other words: the future of your project.
It's not just that it's hard to find people to join you, it's that even engineers who might be considering joining might decide it's not a good career move since they are going to spend years learning a language or a platform that sees no adoption and will not serve their future career.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#154My 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…
Most good devs can learn a new JS framework very quickly...hell I've done it about 10 times now. It's really not a big deal, most are pretty similar or variations on other popular frameworks from other languages.
What matters more is the quality of the language/framework and relative availability of libraries for the particular usecase (general popularity is not always necessary).
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#155One of the main problems with unpopular languages (which this article completely ignores) is growing the team, and hiring in general. In other words: the future of your project. It's not just that it's hard to find people to join you, it's that even engineers who might be considering joining might decide it's not a good career move since they are going to spend years learning a language or a platform that sees no ado…
It would be a hiring point for me for someone that became quickly comfortable and productive in a language that was unfamiliar.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#156My 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…
Kinda off topic, but isn't it a better practice to not hire for specific technologies, but go for good fundamentals?
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the hiring woes problem for languages like this is a reasonable hypothesis, but I've never seen any actual evidence for it. I constantly hear from folks who are worried that they will have this problem, and frequently hear folks saying they tried it and it wasn't a problem (see sibling comments, for example). I'm not sure I've ever heard from someone who has actually had this problem.
Try hiring for obscure and legacy, like delphi. My employer has had this problem for years.
Part of me would really love to go back to Delphi: I learned it when I was like 10 and it spoiled me for every other GUI development process.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#158Earlier 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…
Don't you want people that care about your product instead of the technology behind it? I do. Because there may come a time when another technology is a better fit for your product and ultimately your customer's experiences. Then what? Now your not using elm and your team leaves or is disgruntled. I hire on passion for what we are trying to accomplish, not the technology stack.
Well, I'm magically passionate about every company I interview for. Not sure that's a very helpful marker. ;)
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#159My 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…
> * lack of talent that can step right in and be effective
Competent people, not "talent". Talented people are very rare, and the chances are, you haven't ever seen one in reality.
And there are several things to note about hiring programmers for writing in less popular languages: (1) it's much more difficult to hire an incompetent idiot that knows Elm than similar idiot who knows C#, Java, or Python -- signal to noise ratio is much better; (2) there is such thing as Haskell tax, which pretty much means that writing in Elm can be treated as a job perk; and (3) you don't need people who know Elm, you only need people who can learn it in reasonable time.
Especially (3) is important, because learning yet another language of the same paradigm is not that difficult for a competent programmer.
Re: Elm changed my mind about unpopular languages
#160Earlier 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…
Don't you want people that care about your product instead of the technology behind it? I do. Because there may come a time when another technology is a better fit for your product and ultimately your customer's experiences. Then what? Now your not using elm and your team leaves or is disgruntled. I hire on passion for what we are trying to accomplish, not the technology stack.
> Don't you want people that care about your product instead of the technology behind it? I do.
I would rather have people who care about their craftsmanship and are indifferent about the product than people who care about the product and are indifferent about the craftsmanship. The former ones do a good job regardless of what the product is about.