46 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
46 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
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<title>Using Niche Programming Languages</title>
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<meta name="description" value="How using Niche Programming Languages can drastically improve your hiring candidates, and in-turn your products">
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<body style="margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: rgb(254, 249, 232)">
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<a href="/"><< back</a>
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<p>Published March 7th, 2024</p>
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<h1>Using Niche Programming Languages</h1>
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<p>
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Earlier this week,
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<a href="https://bleacherreport.com">Bleacher Report</a>
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was bought out and forced to re-write their Elixir/Erlang backend in something "more-mainstream" by the
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buying party (Warner), this is a HUGE mistake, and an example of how main-stream thought has eroded the foundations of software engineering. Bleacher Report had used
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Elixir/Erlang since at least <a href="https://www.erlang-solutions.com/case-studies/bleacher-report-case-study/">2017</a>,
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when their case-study of going from 150 servers to 5 via converting their Ruby code to Elixir/Erlang was published.
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All of this resliency, and engineering effort is now going to be rewritten in none other than JavaScript, which of course will be a tremedous effort.
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</p>
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<p>
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So why did they do it? Well, they had lay-offs, and then they needed to re-fill the seats they laid off a few years later. Instead of leveraging this "gold card"
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that is a niche language, Warner decides that it will be too hard to fill N seats. Which is also another issue in the software world, the "butts in seats typing"
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phalacy that more will get done. Anyways, what Warner could have done, is use this fantastical power bestowed by a niche language, and got the best developers
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in that niche technology. If they hired 15 Node devs for 100k a year each, they could afford 5 Erlang masterminds for 300k a year each (and then you wouldn't need a
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rewrite!) The other option is to hire a few Erlang devs and have them train other devs which could be an effective cost-cutting measure as well, without
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having to rewrite your codebase.
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</p>
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<p>
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I've been asked many times by developers, "should I learn X, it's so niche but it looks cool", and to every single one of those questions, I shout "YES!!!".
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Learning is <u>ALWAYS</u> good. But also, if you get really good at these niche technologies, you can become a SME (subject matter expert), and get hired
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by a business looking for people like you. Jane Street is notorious for using OCaml for literally everything. Yaron Minsky, mentions at Jane Street states
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that while there aren't many OCaml developers, the small set that does exist is typically <u>really good</u>, and a grade above the usual Python, Java, JavaScript developer
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(you'll choke on your coffee when you read Jane Streets developer salaries as well).
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</p>
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<p>
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When starting a new project I think you should consider using a niche language.
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You learn a lot, but also when it comes time to scale your idea, and you need to hire a partner or two,
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you'll be greatful you chose it, when extremely talented and passionate individuals send you their resume solely because you chose a backend written in Haskell, Scala,
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Perl, OCaml, Elixir, Clojure, Lua, etc. This is what happened for NoRedInk, after writing their original MVP in Ruby, they ended up using Haskell and Elm for new
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services, and now, they're one of the most well known Functional Programming shops, and they've managed to hire some brilliant people, like the creator of Elm himself!
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</p>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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