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The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

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Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#31

Post by tomjen3 »

socratic wrote: post #16
michaelochurch wrote: post #7

Here's why I, personally, prefer to put all my investment into languages like Scala and Clojure. Scala and Clojure, for their problems (which are not severe, but not to be ignored) have the advantage of being closer to the languages and approaches of the future, in which building comprehensible systems at very high levels of complexity/intellectual intricacy will be even more important relative to performance of exec…

Do people think the hiring and talent argument holds water? The more I hear this argument (e.g., from the "Python Paradox"), the less I buy it. Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about the programming language syntax and semantics than whether it has the right libraries for the subject domain of the startup? Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about whether the startup uses a new and un-tested progra…

I would certainly prefer a startup that uses non braindead languages.

If I were to code in Java all day I might as well get a more secure job with a real company.

Of course there is a slighting scale here -- I would still prefer interesting problems, great environments, vesting, etc.

But if I worked at Yammer now I would be pretty annoyed.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#32

Post by tomjen3 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #15
brown9-2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how someone writing Java in 2016 would be stuck in a 1996 job. Is the same true of someone using C or C++ today?

It depends what the person's using the language for. I'd say "no" for C. C is still the leading language for a lot of purposes: operating systems, runtimes for higher-level languages, device drivers, and applications where tight control of memory use is important. In these domains, C hasn't been supplanted yet-- not even close. I don't know that C++ and Java have substantial domains in which they're superior to other…

C++ isn't a badly-concieved cross. It is a bucket with everything thrown in.

That said I wouldn't want to write larger programs in C and would prefer C++ simply because it scales better (assuming the other programmers don't use all the features it has, but confusing code can be written in any language). Also RAII is awesome.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#33

Post by reissbaker »

michaelochurch wrote: post #15
brown9-2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how someone writing Java in 2016 would be stuck in a 1996 job. Is the same true of someone using C or C++ today?

It depends what the person's using the language for. I'd say "no" for C. C is still the leading language for a lot of purposes: operating systems, runtimes for higher-level languages, device drivers, and applications where tight control of memory use is important. In these domains, C hasn't been supplanted yet-- not even close. I don't know that C++ and Java have substantial domains in which they're superior to other…

In AAA game development, it's C++ or go home. People can argue all day about the relative merits of Java, but C++ certainly has a domain in which it's superior to other choices.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#34

Post by sumeeta »

fleitz wrote: post #23
socratic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people think the hiring and talent argument holds water? The more I hear this argument (e.g., from the "Python Paradox"), the less I buy it. Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about the programming language syntax and semantics than whether it has the right libraries for the subject domain of the startup? Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about whether the startup uses a new and un-tested progra…

Startups are outliers, most of the metrics you mentioned for startups are at best noise and at worst cargo cult business. The important thing is that people who are using esoteric languages more likely to try new and off the wall things that could lead to a new type of business. A new italian restaurant is not a startup, a restaurant that serves only dehydrated food might be. If your startup serves italian food then…

So it means you're used to following through on your curiosity, and capable of fast growth? That's at least what I'm getting out of it right now.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#35

Post by johnx123-up »

jbellis wrote: post #2

"If someone asks me for an honest opinion of them or their work, in private, I feel morally compelled to be as honest as I can with them." I can vouch for that. Around a year ago I asked him for feedback on Cassandra and his response was both thoughtful and helpful. I appreciated that a lot. Thanks, Coda.

Can you share that Cassandra feedback, please?

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#36

Post by mhansen »

orenmazor wrote: post #14
tptacek wrote: post #4

He's not even a little wrong about HN.

He's not. And so I laughed when I opened this thread and the highest rated comment was a java vs scala post. Rather than a reply to his thesis.

A Java vs Scala post is far more interesting to me than discussing the "shut up about the tools and just work" thesis.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#37

Post by donjigweed »

headius wrote: post #27

I can appreciate that having a personal opinion about Scala's use in one particular context belched out into the world is unfortunate, but I have to say that Coda's email reads like my laundry list of concerns about Scala. I could have written this email just by theorizing about Scala's shortcomings based on my short time playing with it. Except in this case, it's correlated with real-world stories. I like Scala, and…

Wow. If this is Charles Nutter I'm surprised no one has commented on this. I'm sure someone could make the argument that as there is ample evidence that humans are much less rational than we typically care to admit, that we are feeling animals who also happen to think rather than thinking animals who also happen to feel, so it is that the creator of what it is today easily the most popular non-Java JVM language could conceivably be "blinded" by their own personal investment in a "competing" language. But I think the much more interesting fact about this comment is that the commenter is basically a fucking programming god. And he thinks Scala is too complex. If I was Colebourne I would be posting on my blog, a very short post, basically just saying "Hey, all you bitches telling me 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, you wrote a little date library, WTF are you again?' Does Charles Nutter carry enough weight for you?"

My own personal viewpoint is that the Nutters and Colebournes are totally on the money. I remember reading a quote from Miguel DeAcaza talking about thread based concurrency programming models in the new N-core paradigm, he said it didn't scale, because "there are not enough PhDs in the world." Despite it's name, I don't think Martin's baby will in the end have lived up to it. Didn't scale, not enough PhDs in the world.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#39

Post by microtonal »

michaelochurch wrote: post #20
socratic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people think the hiring and talent argument holds water? The more I hear this argument (e.g., from the "Python Paradox"), the less I buy it. Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about the programming language syntax and semantics than whether it has the right libraries for the subject domain of the startup? Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about whether the startup uses a new and un-tested progra…

I think it's this: the best programmers generally want to learn new languages and approaches. This means that by mid-career, they've been exposed to at least 5 languages and seriously used two or more. They've at least tried functional programming. Rarely is the general-case favorite, for such a person, C++ or Java. Finding great programmers who know C++ and Java is not very hard. Finding great programmers who prefer…

I think it's this: the best programmers generally want to learn new languages and approaches.

This is true, however an inherent danger to Haskell/Lisp/ML-filtering is that this group has also a relatively high percentage of people who think every problem is a nail.

So filter for people who know functional languages, but also have plenty of experience with, say, C or C++ projects.

Re: The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

#40

Post by temphn »

michaelochurch wrote: post #20
socratic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people think the hiring and talent argument holds water? The more I hear this argument (e.g., from the "Python Paradox"), the less I buy it. Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about the programming language syntax and semantics than whether it has the right libraries for the subject domain of the startup? Is the theory that true "hackers" care more about whether the startup uses a new and un-tested progra…

I think it's this: the best programmers generally want to learn new languages and approaches. This means that by mid-career, they've been exposed to at least 5 languages and seriously used two or more. They've at least tried functional programming. Rarely is the general-case favorite, for such a person, C++ or Java. Finding great programmers who know C++ and Java is not very hard. Finding great programmers who prefer…

Agree on Java, disagree on C++.

Many outstanding engineers use C++ (or a particular variant thereof) and like it.

C++ is the only choice to write serious performance critical apps with acceptable abstractions. The STL may be hard to debug, but it's the only way to do certain things.

And now with C++11, we're going to see it starting to give many other languages a run for their money.

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