
Ask HN: What languages/technologies can you learn for a competitive advantage? - julianeon
What are some languages or technologies you can learn that would give you a competitive advantage?<p>A good example would be Paul Graham and Lisp. A commenter on here was saying Graham&#x27;s startup that was sold to Yahoo could run circles around his competitors, even those with 5x the budget, because using Lisp gave them a huge competitive advantage when creating web development templates.<p>Or, tl;dr: use a Lisp to create DSL&#x27;s (domain specific languages) in some commercial niche.<p>Another example would be Erlang and building a top-tier, low-latency communications app.<p>The definitive example is WhatsApp, but as one person, perhaps you could create a mind-blowing prototype, or get a lot of traction just by being faster than anything else in some related niche.<p>What are some other examples, especially ones that are relevant today?<p>Incidentally I&#x27;m a consultant using JavaScript, React, and AWS, so I&#x27;m not looking for a job or the obvious answers (Python for data science, Typescript for static typing, etc). I&#x27;m most interested in the hardest but perhaps unexpected or generally unexplored languages&#x2F;stacks&#x2F;etc. you can learn, that would launch you ahead of the pack by doing so, and maybe make products possible that aren&#x27;t commonly found otherwise.
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lordkrandel
I don't think that Whatsapp or DSLs or LISP put you in a particular position
of power. Whatsapp is not so much more than IRC and there are thousands of
clones. It's not about technology itself, it's the use, the context, the
domain, the adaptability, the connections, that actually make you necessary.
That's why all these people didn't just learn a language. They threw in their
hearts and looked at the world around them to see what is really worth. That's
why Whatsapp was bought for 17 billion dollars while having 55 employees. Do
you think there was Einstein between them? Just a simple, hassle free, highly
scalable chat app. Think the quarantine without videochat. Also, watch the
Irina Palm movie (that I saw yesterday) and then think again about your
question.

