On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Paul Johnson
Tom Hawkins wrote:
Such a database would help me counter by boss's argument that "it's impossible to find and hire Haskell programmers."
There was a thread last week where someone asked who would be interested in a hypothetical Haskell job. He got about 20 positive responses. This agrees with the experience of Microsoft Research in 2006 when they advertised for a third person to help with GHC development. They also had about 20 applicants.
So next time I hear the "you can't get the programmers" line I'm going to respond with something like this:
"If you post an advert for a Haskell developer you will get 20 applicants. All of those people will be the kind of developer who learns new programming languages to improve their own abilities and stretch themselves, because nobody yet learns Haskell just to get a job.
"If you post an advert for a Java developer you will get 200 applicants. Most of them will be the kind of developer who learned Java because there are lots of Java jobs out there, and as long as they know enough to hold down a job then they see no reason to learn anything."
Also, as an employee, I have to admit that any company that can say it uses Haskell for even part of its codebase immediately goes up in my esteem & puts it on the shortlist for where to send my resume. The same way that programmers knowing Haskell implies a certain interest in CS beyond "I want ma money", an employer using Haskell implies technically interesting software & a stronger commitment to quality over expediency.