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Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

Developers can learn new languages though if a company lets them.

(Edited to be less glib. bad habit)

A friend (C# dev) just refused a job from a company in the Netherlands, for a D dev position. I don't know if it's the same company.

It's not that they're not capable, but some will not want to risk several years of their career to learn it.

I can understand this. If I had to pick a marketable/future employment language today, I would pick C# over D (I have used both).

And did they refuse the job because of D, low salary, not wanting to move to the Netherlands or some other reason?

I could see a C++ dev giving this a try without hurting their career prospects, but C# devs are not exactly known for trying out non-mainstream technologies. If they switch for a couple of years MS will pump out a couple of frameworks and .NET programming languages. Fire and motion as such.

He wants to move to the Netherlands and he was quite explicit that he's apprehensive about D. It's true that C# programmers generally don't venture outside the mainstream.

honestly, if i were hiring and heard this of an applicant (and didn't have reason to believe it was something else like salary), i would feel that we dodged a bullet.

(that may not be entirely fair, i guess i just tend to be skeptical of people who get hung up on languages.)

I don’t agree with you. Provided you’d persuade him that the company and tech are worth it, I think he’d be a good addition to most companies.

It’s a legit concern.

I agree, but that costs money for the company and time for the developer.

Airbnb dropping react native due to a lack of qualified candidates that were articulate in both the native and javascript realm is a great example. Something can work flawlessly with the right conditions (for instance, developers that understand and can implement the path of least resistance across native and react), yet if its prohibitive to create those conditions you are back where you started.

If the dominant ideology among developers is that learning X language or technology costs more of their career than its worth, it dies out. Same goes for the company and their resources.

I'm skeptical about extrapolating too much from a JavaScript example. That ecosystem looks nothing like the rest of the software development world.

Erlang has been around in a niche role for >30 years and still going strong, even stronger now that Elixir has reinvigorated interest in the platform.

My only point in that you should be as careful about creating problems building a team and adding ramp-up time to your product when you attempt to optimize. It's a decision that doesn't go away without lots of heartburn and having employees lose morale rewriting their own work.

> but that costs money for the company and time for the developer

Quite the opposite: The new tool saves time and money.

Airbnb example just shows that one should not jump on the newest thing on the market.

According to their own blog, they dropped react because it was a difficult to use piece of technology that was slowing them down and making it difficult to offer a top notch mobile experience.

Yes, they also had difficulties hiring devs which know both native and react, but that's normal. Most mobile devs wouldn't touch react.

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