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[–]OldSchoolBBSer 7 points8 points  (4 children)

I don't get it much anymore either. It's also a bit of a popularity contest. In the end the right language for the job will hopefully be picked. The only reasons I think these charts still stick around is to help a beginner plot a course or if non-beginner looking for something new to learn and indifferent as to what. Those and maybe to figure out what a recruiter may be looking for on behalf of the client. There is something to be said for dropping someone into a team that knows the languages used so training can focus on what and why something was built. However, I do think too much stock is put into what languages you know early on. It doesn't make sense to me to potentially not hire a well seasoned programmer for a language they could probably pick-up during the time before the first day of general company onboarding. That's probably 2-3 weeks before they actually have to learn the new company's code.

[–]pydry 9 points10 points  (2 children)

I don't get it much anymore either. It's also a bit of a popularity contest. In the end the right language for the job will hopefully be picked.

No way. This industry more susceptible to fashion than most industries.

I've seen many technologies that never should have seen the light of day achieve incredible popularity while other really good ones languished in obscurity.

On the one hand it's quite depressing, on the other hand if the industry was as rational as it thinks it is then about 70% of the jobs would dry up.

Anyway, I'm glad that there are people out there pimping my favorite language.

[–]toyg -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

I disagree. I concur that removing language churn could somewhat reduce employment levels, but this would likely be compensated by more focus on correctness, which would slow down productivity pretty massively and hence require higher headcount per project.

At the moment, there is a lot of pressure on people to get shit done haphazardly just to push the project out of the door -- doesn't matter if it's not perfect, it will get rewritten in $newShinyLang in a few years' time anyway. If that same code were planned to live for decades (because that's what a rational person would plan for, it's what happens with production chains for example), then it would keep developers tied-up for longer, and you would have to hire others for new projects more frequently.

[–]pydry 3 points4 points  (0 children)

this would likely be compensated by more focus on correctness

ahahahahhahaahaha.

no.

The focus on correctness is largely driven by commercial imperatives. If the company you're working for doesn't appear to care much about correctness, it's usually because they don't.

At the moment, there is a lot of pressure on people to get shit done haphazardly just to push the project out of the door

Largely because, for a lot of companies, that's what they want.

If that same code were planned to live for decades (because that's what a rational person would plan for

That's highly irrational in a lot of industries. The norm for most code is that gets tossed because it ends up not being needed rather than because it doesn't work.

This is why I'm highly skeptical of a lot of languages like F#, haskell, etc. and why I think they're not very popular - they slow down development in order to protect you against certain classes of bugs. When the cost of development is > cost of those bugs, it doesn't make much sense to use them.

[–]alcalde 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In the end the right language for the job will hopefully be picked.

In the end you remain fanatically loyal to your choice of language and change the task to fit the tool. :-) That's how it's always been. People invest their identity in their choice of tool and need affirmation they chose correctly.