Re:It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
by vonmoltke on Sunday March 11, 2012 @01:18PM
(#3690687)
I have encountered a few (too few) companies who recognize the equivalence of languages, and recognize that moving from, say, Python to Java isn't very difficult and isn't nearly the same gulf as trying to move from C to Java.
That said, the proliferation of language/framework-of-the-week projects is a serious drag on the industry. Its too easy right now to roll your own framework/JVM language/interpreter. The temptation is too great to manufacture a framework/JVM language/interpreter to solve your sort-of unique problem instead of adapting an existing one to your needs through modifications or extensions. In addition to clouding the buzzword pool, it hurts the position of existing languages because the energy that could have gone into improving language/framework X now goes into developing Y based on X instead.
Re:It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem
by javajosh on Sunday March 11, 2012 @06:46PM
(#3691508)
So we are in agreement and the question becomes: how can we debunk the belief that these languages offer any real difference in productivity?
Presumably if we could show this then the world's programmers could focus on porting old code into "Codesperanto" and everyone would be happy(er).
And yet they are only equivalent in the same way human languages are: there is a shared core of ideas that are expressible in any language, and then there are things which are easier to express in some, and which cannot be expressed in some others.
The proliferation of computer languages seems to be strong evidence to the claim that programmers do NOT believe in the equivalence of languages. And perhaps pg is right, that we already have a winner, Lisp, and most people are just too blind to see it.