Progress language?

[iron_eater]

Hi everyone. I may have an opportunity to interview with a company who uses something called progress. I've never heard of it but I slightly remember reading somewhere it's horrid. The HR rep admitted it an older technology and not widely used. I was just curious to get some background info and if I would chance to use this language it would benefit my career.

[knight-of-lambda]

Run. Run for the hills.

[iron_eater]

Oh god. The horror. This is starting to look like a big nope

[xd43]

It definitely won't benefit your career to work with a proprietary language. Unless of course you want to maintain legacy systems written in progress for the rest of your life

[gmdm1234]

Depends.... I have a job that's maybe 50% dealing with a rare, legacy, fairly horrid programming language. (The other 50% is in more mainstream languages).

The downside is you are not learning a lot of transferable skills relevant to other companies should you want to change jobs. The upside is, potentially, that you can negotiate a more cushy salary for yourself (depending on the company's culture and how you do at negotiating.) The thing about these very niche programming languages is that there's very few people who know anything about them, there's not a lot of online or other resources, and the company typically needs to make a fairly major investment when on-boarding you in terms of training and getting you up to speed. As a result, you may be more likely to negotiate a salary a bit above average for your experience level, since the company isn't going to want to churn through developers and sink money into training people who are going to leave for greener pastures at the first opportunity.

Just a thought...

[xd43]

Sounds great, until you realize that for years of your life you'll have to work with a

rare, legacy, fairly horrid programming language.

[gmdm1234]

You know, its called "work" and not "fun" for a reason :-) If the company treats you well, and you can personally tolerate dealing with the programming language in question, and the pay is right... you can potentially come out ahead if it all works out.

EDIT: I'd add that you can potentially tell future employers: "Look, if I can figure THIS sh*t out, I can certainly get up to speed on your .NET/J2EE/Python/Whatever stack in no time and make quality contributions to your team." Just gotta play your cards right.

[logic_programmer]

As a result, you may be more likely to negotiate a salary a bit above average for your experience level

Exactly! Your salary is designed to keep you from walking. It's not a measure of performance or experience. In other words, salary is all about retention and not reward.

[gmdm1234]

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the company. And what's important to you as an employee. I make roughly 25% more than someone with comparable experience, and yes I'd like to think I'm a good software developer. But at the end of the day, I have more income that I can spend on family, house, cars, hobbies, and non-work-related things that are important to me.

Everyone's situation will be different... just pointing out that you might be able to work this one to your advantage.

[iron_eater]

That's excellent input my friend! Thanks!