Ask HN: What is the job market like for niche languages (Nim, Crystal)?

Elixir, Nim, Crystal, Elm...

Currently I am a JS dev, and not enjoying it at all. I looked at Elixir and Crystal, like both. But I am open to learning anything that is unlike JS at this point. How is the job market like?

The market is obeying the law of supply and demand. Hardly anyone knows those languages, and there is no big player backing them, so you have to dig inside each community to know which shop is active. For elm, you can try noredink. For f# and closure there are a bunch of Fintech.

For elixir, well, if you're willing to relocate for south west France, DM me ;)

Non-existent to a close approximation (maybe more Elixir stuff out there than the others you listed but still very rare). Learn those languages if you’re interested and curious but if the goal is to get a job with a new to you language, stay as far away as possible from them. Not only are there very few jobs but also the niche languages will distract you from learning stuff that’s in demand.

In my experience the job market just revolves around business needs combined with transferrable skills for an affordable price.

Most business needs are a cheap version of CRUD+Business Rules.

As a result, the biggest languages (keep in mind that most businesses have large amounts of existing code) are also relatively old (except Go, C# and Swift which are relatively young).

Languages I see with my current clients and have seen with former clients and employers (medium to large organisations):

  - Java (Including Scala, Kotlin and Groovy)
  - C and C++ (usually both are found at the same company)
  - Python
  - JavaScript (including TypeScript)
  - Web stuff like HTML and CSS (but that's mostly generated now)
  - Go
  - Swift (and Objective-C, mostly iOS development, some tvOS and macOS)
  - C# be it modern or some classic ASP.NET
  - A bunch of application-specific languages, Apex/PL-SQL/TSQL/X++

Besides "we already have it" there is the hiring pool problem. If you need to find someone for one of the above languages, the pools are generally big and available enough to find a suitable candidate in a month or two. And as such, if someone leaves you know you'll be able to replace hem.

If a platform or application demands a specific language, that's used, but otherwise it's all just availability of people and institutional knowledge.

For your specific languages you might be able to find work at niche sectors like telecom appliance manufacturers, defense or academic institutions.

Edit: and Rust, which like Go, is young (but even younger) yet gaining quite some traction. Also forgot Python for a second there.

the fact that you used the word “niche” suggests that you’re already know the answer to your question