This is just science fiction. To mention "recent developments" in the introduction is somewhat misleading considering how far the current state of technology is from their hypothetical superintelligence.
We don't have superintelligence, we don't have the remote idea of how to get started on creating it, in all likelihood we don't even have the correct hardware for it or any idea what the correct hardware would look like. We also don't know whether it's achievable at all.
> Optimizing for worker fungibility, in a vacuum, seems like a -EV "playing not to lose" strategy.
That's why you don't optimise for it in a vacuum. You weigh the potential benefits of switching to Haskell versus the additional cost of maintaining/growing a Haskell team.
> I hear far more complaints about how difficult it is to find good people from companies hiring for mainstream languages than from those using more niche stuff
Of course, there is just more of them in the first place. The other effects that you describe might also be true but keep in mind what the base rates are.
I don't think that it's wise to sabotage your own future and productivity as a company just so you can pave the way for some language to become more popular.
I feel like this isn't discussed enough. I can't comment on the technical merits of Haskell but growing an organization and replacing engineers is so much more difficult when you're using tools that aren't mainstream.
It's possible depending on how much inconvenience you can accept in your life but that's also kind of irrelevant. If you don't like something online, don't take part in it. You don't have an obligation to consume and do everything online, just pick out the parts of it that work for you.
It's really a strength, not a quirk. Negative indexing and array slicing in general are great in Python. Really easy to pick up and way more convenient than any other language that I've come across.
Bidding on your name might be an even bigger waste of money than bidding on a competitor's name, especially for established brands. eBay's experience with this came up on a recent episode of Freakonomics - https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/
This is kind of embarassing. Do you guys think that the people at Facebook who make these decisions realise how pathetic it looks from the outside? Or are they somehow justifying it in their own heads?
Please seek professional advice if you haven't already. Advice from strangers on the internet can sound comforting but it won't do much for serious problems that are also very personal.
> and those insights are transferable to your daily work
Some people say this, others say that it makes your daily work worse because going back to a language that isn't on the cult-approved list is so difficult.
I was referring to the threats of hanging in this case. I phrased it more generally because there are many other examples from the similar threads that we've had over the past couple of days. It's astounding that I even need to clarify this.
It's kind of sad to see how these threads quickly turn into a a messy sequence of poorly reasoned arguments or how some people are trying to justify really extreme positions.