st1x7

Just don't tell them how far they are from reality and they'll keep writing the papers. Intelligence contained.

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.

> plenty of firms are using Scala in their data engineering stacks

Isn't that just a result of everyone being into Spark a few years ago?

> 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.

> on the other hand you have an easier time to attract the few you need

How is it easier to find a Haskell developer vs finding a Java/Python/PHP developer?

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.

I need to switch between zero- and one-indexed languages often. It really doesn't make a difference.

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?