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Re:So you're using a weird language by pjmlp on Thursday October 06, 2022 @09:13AM (#33107790)
You misunderstood my reply, it was flip a coin and let their work speak for themselves, after being hired.
Re:So you're using a weird language by throwaway290 on Thursday October 06, 2022 @09:26AM (#33107891)
Okay, so this means it's not relevant to you which is... an interesting take. I guess you better operate your business in at-will employment legal landscape (and not feel bad for your employees' families after you fire them left and right this way).

For me I would definitely make use of this extra information before hiring. Hiring a carpenter who's able to work with power tools is likely better, unless I need to foresee a situation where they must work without electricity. Even if they are physically fit, power tools can enable a human to do something not possible at all with bare hands.

For a programmer it's the reverse, if we assume "power tool" is an "easy" language compared to something like OCaml, or maybe tools like VS Code and Copilot compared to vim. These tools don't help overcome a physical limitation, like the power tools of a carpenter, but a mental one. Being able to set up vim fully to be as productive and produce as few bugs as someone with VS Code, or being able to pick up Haskell without being able to immediately get a human answer your every question, exemplifies the type of higher-level skills and learning capability that is the primary value of a human employee compared to a robot.

In other words, in context of this discussion, the equivalent of carpenter's power tools might be much closer to Haskell + vim than JavaScript + VSC.