Programming languages

[mtbc]

I have been considering my choice of programming language for personal computing projects, for both employability and agreeability. People might say to pick the project first, then the appropriate language for it, but language would certainly be a part of why I can stick with a project. I shall have my carts and horses whichever way around I please. On my radar are:

• Java, Python, TypeScript with React, for employability. I am already familiar with them, they remain popular and are still developing in good ways.


• Rust, which has traction and is a pleasure to write. It's enough of a challenge that some ongoing practice will do me good.


• Haskell and Idris. I loved Haskell when I used it, though I sometimes found performance a challenge and am now rusty. I am curious about Idris being less lazy and at the extreme end of static typing.


• Elixir with Phoenix, and Gleam. Gleam looks interesting in terms of syntax and typing but I don't know the BEAM ecosystem well enough to judge if it will gain even as much traction as Elixir already has.

I plan to try out projects and languages then let how engaged I am with them, how much effort it is to continue, be my guide. I can even try out the same challenges in multiple languages, see which I enjoy more.

Comments

[emperor]

I dunno if any of our roles are of interest to you, but we do have a bunch at the moment in the software area - https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/jobs/

[mtbc]

Thank you! Not the greatest batch for me this time around, alas, rather too JS/PHP. Last time I was looking, there was a better-fitting WMF vacancy, I just didn't manage to get far through the interview process before already getting decent offers from others.

[emperor]

Yeah, our hiring process is certainly not rapid :-/

[mtbc]

It probably beats the University of Cambridge's, at least! Years ago, I had a verbal job offer (computer officer) where the European Molecular Biology Laboratory then went all the way from "we'd like to interview you" to written offer in the weeks it took the Old Schools to generate the followup written offer, by which time I'd accepted EMBL's.

In my current job hunt, the ones who lose out tend to be the ones where they require several interviews, none of which can be scheduled before the previous went well, and all of which must be done with people with little near-term space in their schedules.

[mellowtigger]

I haven't even heard of some of those technologies. :( I'm definitely out of practice. I'm a huge fan of PowerShell, but even Microsoft seems determined to kill it except for server usage. I have Rust in my mind as the next (if any) language that I learn. I only hear good things about it. And... it has arrived in Linux!
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-linux-6-15-kernel-arrives-and-its-big-a-victory-for-rust-fans/

[mtbc]

Languages like Idris and Gleam are really niche and many of those I named aren't used commonly. If you're basically missing stuff from my last two bullet points, you're doing just fine. Yay for noticing Rust, I do think it's a nice language and a good investment but even that isn't yet mainstream. Some reassurance: if you find Rust difficult to get on with for a while, it's not just you, it's not as easy to pick up as many popular languages, though for good reasons and at least there's decent documentation.

[crazyscot]

I'll wave the flag for Rust too. I'm really enjoying working with it, despite the occasional "trait boundaries were not satisfied". So much so that I've just had a conference paper accepted about my journey in creating qcp. Now, if only I could find a job that would let me write some Rust and not be wedded to C++ ...

[mtbc]

Congratulations! Blockchain (sorry!) is full of Rust, also the Rustaceans Slack has a #hiring-web2 channel, seems likely you'll get there in the end as I've seen multiple efforts now to replace legacy C++ code with Rust.

[andrewducker]

PowerShell is awesome, and seems to be getting regular updates for the desktop. It's what I do all of my scripting in at work.