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

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61–70 of 273 posts

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

#61

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.

No the best strategy is to memorize leetcode problems. All the highest paying jobs (>400k) require dictionary like recall of computer science algorithm fundamentals.

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

#62
I’ve been working at a job that uses exclusively Elixir for backend work, for 100+ engineers. I’ve gotten multiple messages on LinkedIn from recruiters from other companies that also use Elixir. So I can’t speak about those other languages, but the Elixir job market is strong.

Seems like there’s a lot of listings if you just Google “elixir jobs.” There are also a few dedicated sites such as https://elixirjobs.net/

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

#63
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)

+1, elixir is being used in a lot of cool places and only growing. For example at discord, their chat infrastructure is built with elixir. https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/10/08/real-time-communicat...

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

#66
Does language really matter? Any experienced programmers should be able to pick up any language in a matter of days if he knows the underlying concepts. Similarly, the language is not what makes a job interesting.

I mean, what don't you like about JS? Is it the syntax or is it the environment? The code base? The framework? Maybe web dev is not for you? Maybe you are asked to do thing you personally disagree with (ex: ads). Language rarely was the main thing that defined the project, though there are correlations: if you are doing JS, you are probably doing web dev, with a higher chance of front-end work. But chances are that a NodeJS back-end and one written in, say, Elixir, won't feel much different after the honeymoon is passed.

If you want something different to JS, why not try good old C instead of niche languages? It has a significant job market, you will learn about memory management, and get your foot into embedded, high performance, and system programming, far from the world of JS. These skills will translate into the other (niche or not) languages you may use next. Even in high level languages, having an idea of how that works on a lower level is a good thing.

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

#67

What is it about js you dont like? is it really about the language? a lot of the complaints i hear about js have more to do with “the community”, “the team”, “the application”. here’s the thing: there is _so much_ built in js. i think theres a better chance you find what you want in a mainstream language (js or otherwise), but you first have to identify what your values are.

I loathe JavaScript but I adore Typescript. Anyone unhappy with JS (or anyone writing JS period) should stop and adopt TS.

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

#68

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.

I used to think this way and wound up completely exhausted in my career. Coming from web dev, I used to volunteer to dive into a Objective C repo to fix some random bug in a mobile app and then a week later my boss would ask me to build a big feature in that app. I'd spend a few weeks getting up to speed on the language and build the feature, and then I would never use what I learned again. My boss would ask me to di…

> My boss would ask me to dive into another tool I don't really know and the cycle would repeat ad nauseum.

There is power in saying No.

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

#69
post #4

There is a significant Erlang/Elixir job market in Europe and UK.

The Elixir job market is getting better in the US as well. I’m currently employed at a company that uses Eixir exclusively for backend, and we’ve got 100+ engineers. I’ve had multiple recruiters from other Elixir-using companies reach out to me on LinkedIn as well.

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

#70

PG has a really old (2004) blog about how python programmers are smarter than other programmers. Basically it comes down to the python programmers being ahead of the curve by learning a less popular language (at the time), and they must be using python because they believe helps build better software or whatever. Meaning they're less likely to simply be 9-5 programmers just doing it for the money, but will have opini…

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