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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)?

#91

Post by mmartinson »

GuB-42 wrote: post #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:…

> But chances are that a NodeJS back-end and one written in, say, Elixir, won't feel much different after the honeymoon is passed.

This is very, very far from my experience, having worked extensively with both of these particular examples.

At my current job I deep dive into a lot of years old, kinda sketchy Elixir code, and it's almost always less effort to learn/fix something than I've found in other languages, especially other dynamic languages. Except when macros are overused.

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

#92

Post by zerr »

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.

Industry gatekeepers do not agree, unfortunately.

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

#93

Post by whimsicalism »

nly wrote: post #76
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.

It's a cute theory, but the reality is most employers want you to be relatively efficient from day dot. I work in a team with a codebase split 50/50 between C# and C++, and if you're not proficient in one of those then the chances of you getting hired, even if you're an incredible programmer, are slim.

Having a C# codebase and being unwilling to hire Java developers seems like unnecessarily constraining yourself.

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

#94

Post by Kwpolska »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #31
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.

It really amazes me how often I see this fallacy. The total amount of supply doesn't matter much. What matters (both for the employer and the job-seeker) is the ratio of supply to demand. E.g., let's say JavaScript has the most demand of any language and there are 2 zillion job openings. This sounds great for job seekers initially, but what if there are 5 zillion JS devs seeking jobs? In that case job hunting might b…

What if I don’t want to work remotely? What if I’m not in the US, or what if I’m in Colorado? What if all the jobs are in an industry I would prefer not to work in or am morally opposed to? If there are 2 zillion positions available, there’s a much larger chance to find something in my area and meeting all my requirements/wishes. But if there are just 100 jobs, I might end up without a job, or with a job I’m not very happy about.

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

#95

Post by czbond »

oneplane wrote: post #27
CoastalCoder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, that's right, I knew I forgot one! It's even gaining traction in ML for some reason, we've been using it in an image processing pipeline because performance and safety-wise it simply had the best results. Edit: I even forgot to list Python. Maybe I should just look up some language popularity list and use that instead.

For Rust and ML, are the tooling libraries available to any quantity in Rust that are present in Python? I was under the impression Python has such an advance runaway any other languages will be hard to catchup (eg: Go has been trying, R , etc)

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

#96

Post by jollybean »

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.

This doesn't answer the question.

More specifically, it's probably not useful advice.

I'm a generalist in a few languages, and I'm painfully aware of my lack of 'depth' of insight into the languages I use when I'm not 'knees deep'.

For some niche languages, you can't just 'read a book' and 'check stack exchange'.

I think we should all be 'multilingual' but it really helps to have depth of expertise.

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

#97

Post by AlchemistCamp »

Kwpolska wrote: post #94
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really amazes me how often I see this fallacy. The total amount of supply doesn't matter much. What matters (both for the employer and the job-seeker) is the ratio of supply to demand. E.g., let's say JavaScript has the most demand of any language and there are 2 zillion job openings. This sounds great for job seekers initially, but what if there are 5 zillion JS devs seeking jobs? In that case job hunting might b…

What if I don’t want to work remotely? What if I’m not in the US, or what if I’m in Colorado? What if all the jobs are in an industry I would prefer not to work in or am morally opposed to? If there are 2 zillion positions available, there’s a much larger chance to find something in my area and meeting all my requirements/wishes. But if there are just 100 jobs, I might end up without a job, or with a job I’m not very…

Again, this is missing the importance of the ratio of supply to demand.

> If there are 2 zillion positions available, there’s a much larger chance to find something in my area and meeting all my requirements/wishes. But if there are just 100 jobs, I might end up without a job, or with a job I’m not very happy about.

If there are 5 zillion candidates seeking those 2 zillion positions, it's a much smaller chance you'll get one you want. You might end up without a job, or with a job you're not very happy about.

BTW, If you're in Colorado, go to Elixir Conf in a month! https://2022.elixirconf.com/registration

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

#98

Post by rolisz »

rco8786 wrote: post #51
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I've wasted so much time digging into tools that I've never used again. Don’t think of it this way. Learning new tools is almost never a waste of time, you just don’t know when you’ll need the lessons learned next. But you will.

It depends. Maybe the alternative is to get better at a tool you already know. Maybe you can be a jack of all trades, master of none, or you can go really deep into only 2-3 things. It depends a lot on your personality I think.

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

#99

Post by patrickthebold »

ptttr wrote: post #43

I do definitely recommend Clojure - I've switched to it in 2019 coming from Rails and JS and never looked back. Clojure's job market is great, there's no shortage of offers, even for newcomers and it has been the top paying lang in stackoverflow surveys for years https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-salary-salary-... However, the most important part is that Clojure is a very powerful piece of technology that…

I love clojure, and would love a clojure job, BUT my hesitation comes from the companies choosing clojure or any niche language. Choosing a niche language seems like a very risky move, to me. My fear is that that its a small company and someone senior and technical (CTO?) just wants to have fun in a new cool language because they are bored.

Don't get me wrong, I also want to have fun in a new cool language because I'm bored, but that's not a good decision for a company to pick that as a tool.

Anyway, I'm worried that the culture is not entirely practical in their technical decisions, and that's my hesitation.

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

#100

Post by dnissley »

nly wrote: post #76
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.

It's a cute theory, but the reality is most employers want you to be relatively efficient from day dot. I work in a team with a codebase split 50/50 between C# and C++, and if you're not proficient in one of those then the chances of you getting hired, even if you're an incredible programmer, are slim.

This is a trait of an employer that I consider a red flag. If they don't understand that most programming languages are pretty similar, and can be picked up quickly by any willing person, they probably don't understand a lot of other things in regards to tech
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