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

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

#11

Post by msh »

As others have said very small, especially for someone not an expert in those languages.

It should be done more for interest and generally broadening your skills to make you a better developer.

If you want to learn a new language to get a different kind of job start by considering what kind of job you want and then learn the most used languages in that bracket.

Like c/c++ for game dev jobs, Objective C/Swift for iPhone development, java/kotlin for android and so on. For more generic dev jobs the answer would be that Java or C# would be a good place to start.

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

#13

Post by CoastalCoder »

oneplane wrote: post #7

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…

I agree with your overall point.

I think the outlier might be Rust. Somehow it's managing to gain traction despite the headwinds you mention.

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

#14

Post by a6chris »

I wondered similar, though for Elixir not for Crystal.

For the UK jobs market:

https://highestpayingjobs.co.uk/it/elixir

https://highestpayingjobs.co.uk/it/nim

Fair warning, it's my site - was an experiment in learning NextJS so fairly rough around the edges. I will add Crystal when back home.

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

#15

Post by blocked_again »

Best strategy for becoming a high paying/good software engineer would be to think of yourselves as problem solver and language as just one of the tool for problem solving.

Thinking of yourselves as someone who is a writer of a certain programming language is self constarining and missing the point.

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

#16

Post by bees_buzz »

jstx1 wrote: post #5

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.

If you go looking for elixir stuff it’s there, and it seems like its usage in industry is expanding at a steady pace. IMO this is because it’s a reasonably approachable language designed to solve a common difficult problem (high concurrency, fault tolerance at scale)

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

#17

Post by frogulis »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #13
oneplane wrote: post #7

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…

I agree with your overall point. I think the outlier might be Rust. Somehow it's managing to gain traction despite the headwinds you mention.

I guess it fills a niche that companies really need filled

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

#18

Post by greggyb »

phtrivier wrote: post #3

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 ;)

Funny you mention F# and Clojure, as these were the only contenders for a product I am building with a partner. We went with F# and are quite happy thus far.

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

#19

Post by yieldcrv »

blocked_again wrote: post #15

Best strategy for becoming a high paying/good software engineer would be to think of yourselves as problem solver and language as just one of the tool for problem solving. Thinking of yourselves as someone who is a writer of a certain programming language is self constarining and missing the point.

Although true for the job, this is a bit disingenuous for getting the job market because recruiters are absolutely not thinking of you as a problem solver with language being just one of the tools.

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

#20

Post by dom96 »

blocked_again wrote: post #15

Best strategy for becoming a high paying/good software engineer would be to think of yourselves as problem solver and language as just one of the tool for problem solving. Thinking of yourselves as someone who is a writer of a certain programming language is self constarining and missing the point.

Precisely. Any good company won't care what programming language you are specifically proficient in. They care about how proficient you are in learning new things.

I have created a lot of Nim projects and implemented much of its stdlib. My full-time job isn't using Nim, but the experience I gained through my work in Nim has helped my career significantly.

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