Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rest of the Story (Yammer & Scala)

codahale.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 62 posts

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

#11

Post by jmspring »

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…

Languages are but a tool to build things. What specifically about Scala and Clojure, do you feel, make them closer to the languages and the approaches of the future?

While one should keep abreast of current technologies (and languages), there is still plenty of work that requires knowledge of C from the system level to SAAS platform technologies and implementations. It is a 35+ year old language.

If your argument was "learn these knew languages for the advantages the provide given the likely emergence of X, Y or Z", I would buy it. Saying a newer language is a path to the future? Lacking.

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

#12

Post by harryh »

jmspring wrote: post #11
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…

Languages are but a tool to build things. What specifically about Scala and Clojure, do you feel, make them closer to the languages and the approaches of the future? While one should keep abreast of current technologies (and languages), there is still plenty of work that requires knowledge of C from the system level to SAAS platform technologies and implementations. It is a 35+ year old language. If your argument was…

Functional programming more easily fosters the parallelism that will be required to keep making performance gains as individual core speeds top out and CPUs only get faster by adding cores.

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

#13

Post by melling »

It's good to see honest evaluations of technologies. It helps people better decide when something is mature enough to adopt for their organization, and helps in avoiding the landmines when they do. It also lets the the "owners" know what is impeding adoption so they have better focus. Scala is several years old now and really is gaining adoption in larger (ie conservative) firms.

Scala is far from perfect and has some warts, but that's the type of technology that always seems to win. C++ vs Eiffel, Intel vs Motorola.

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

#15

Post by michaelochurch »

brown9-2 wrote: post #8
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…

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 choices. C++ is a badly-conceived cross between C and high-level languages and Java is the worst of the JVM languages.

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

#16

Post by socratic »

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 programming language than traction, likelihood of success, money, or the actual problems being solved?

Do the best "hackers" come in by searching job sites for niche programming languages, rather than referrals?

Even ignoring the huge disadvantages in library support, tooling, community sizes, and so on, are the hiring and talent advantages believable? Are the sort of people who learn Haskell also the sort of people who would be 99th percentile C++ systems engineers for some reason?

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

#17

Post by CPlatypus »

tptacek wrote: post #4

He's not even a little wrong about HN.

He's not wrong, but at the same time I don't think anybody who so enjoys pissing contests on Twitter can afford to be too condescending about slapfights on HN. The last thing either place needs is more hipper-than-thou posturing.

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

#18

Post by jmspring »

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…

There are all sorts of people those that get their kicks on language selection and semantics, there are those that love to discuss process (agile, scrum, TDD, whatever), others that want to focus solely on delivery. Reality is, the best people are somewhere in the middle.

An engineer worth hiring is one that is bright, curious, and learns quickly. That said, they should also have an interest in some aspect of what you are producing. I, personally, have searched for jobs on the basis of esoteric / niche items, mainly hoping for something different. The most rewarding experiences have been where I've worked with/brought in good people and built cool things. One of those involved Windows Server and WinCE work, and I personally dislike working on Windows. But the overall project was interesting.

Technologies, languages, approach, and product. A good engineer who is interested will likely have deeper interests and help contribute in one of those four areas.

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

#19

Post by parfe »

ShardPhoenix wrote: post #6

Why are the needs of the "Scala community" to save face more important than the truth?

Evangelists sold a bills of goods to non-technical managers. Can't be letting something silly like facts or criticism get in the way of putting a pet language choice into production.

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

#20

Post by michaelochurch »

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 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 those languages is quite difficult.

Post reply on HN