

Rust for Clojurists - panic
https://gist.github.com/oakes/4af1023b6c5162c6f8f0

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siscia
> Many people try to compare Rust to Go, but this is flawed. Go is an ancient
> board game that emphasizes strategy. Rust is more appropriately compared to
> Chess, a board game focused on low-level tactics. Clojure, with its high-
> level purview, is a better analogy to the enduring game of stones.

Just for this is worth reading...

Nice intro anyway, but nothing to enlightenment...

I already knew a little of Rust and the article didn't add much... Well
written thought...

~~~
whoisthemachine
Yeah the tongue-in-cheek humor in this article is pretty good.

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PopsiclePete
I really like Rust so far. I have no idea how to create anything useful with
it, since every library seems to be in flux right now, but the way the
language has stabilized, it's....nice!

This feels like a modern language, it feels like you can be productive, it
feels it might be huge.

It's got an uphill battle though, and it's definitely more chaotic than a
language like Go, which has had pretty good API/lib stability for years now,
even if it's technically a weaker language.

Will be interesting to see how things progress.

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kyllo
_Users of Lisp dialects like Clojure are certainly fond of their macros, as
there is a tremendous power, simplicity, and hubristic feeling of personal
superiority they afford due to their homoiconic syntax._

Guilty as charged, hah.

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edem
I believe that "Clojurian" is the correct term for most Clojurians (including
myself) but correct me if I'm wrong. Fine article though!

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blunte
This probably won't make me switch to Rust any time soon, but it was a very
entertaining (and enlightening) read.

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TheMagicHorsey
I always confuse Rust and Racket. This post did not help. Thought OP was going
to compare Clojure and Racket. Why would you compare Rust and Clojure ... LOL!

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ecolak
Appreciate the article and the similarities that you point out between Rust
and Clojure but I would not say syntax is one of them.

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michaelochurch
OP, if you're reading: I understand that you want a humorous tone, but could
you please fix this?

 _You 're in an industry reaping disproportionate benefit from loose money
policies, leading to a trend-chasing culture of overpaid nerds making web
apps. You feel guilty about this, but there is nothing you can do about it
because you have no other talents that a rational person would pay you for._

The misperception that we're "overpaid" is a dangerous one. It's one that we
have to fight. We're not overpaid. If anything, most of us are underpaid,
considering that nontechnical VPs working 11-to-3 make 3 times as much as we
do, and that people who inherit the family connections to become founders
often get 100 times as much equity.

I don't think we're catastrophically underpaid. I think we're much less
underpaid and abused than the rest of the Former Middle class.

I'm sure that this was an attempt at humor, and it's easy to consider
ourselves "overpaid" when we consider the frivolity that's common in our
industry right now, but maybe _underutilized_ is a better word. This idea that
programmers are overpaid right now is one that we have to fight with
everything that we've got, because that's what the Bad Guys want us (and
everyone, but especially the government, so they can abuse the H1-B program)
to think and it's not true.

~~~
oldmanjay
Out of curiosity, do you feel like bringing in some class animosity (your
strawman VP) makes your point more obviously correct or more obviously self-
serving?

~~~
michaelochurch
More correct.

It really bugs me that software engineers claim that they're "overpaid" at
$120k. Now, $120k isn't poor by any stretch of the imagination, not even in
New York or San Francisco. For a talented entry-level programmer, it's about
fair. We're not exactly Mr. Moneybags, though. We work a lot harder than most
people in technology, and while some of us get a decent payout (those who are
decent negotiators) there are many who are terrible at representing their
interests, and they bring the whole market down.

We have a tendency to negotiate against ourselves and it hurts us. Right now,
we're still able to get fair-ish salaries in a booming market, but we (as a
tribe) get so little in terms of equity, cultural control, autonomy, and
general respect, compared to what we could. Many programmers still have to
deal with "user stories" and "Scrum tickets" when they have 5+ years of
experience! That's fucking nuts. This is supposed to be an R&D job in which we
advance the state of human knowledge, technology, automation and processes.

That doesn't just hurt us. It hurts society because a bunch of self-promoting
charlatans come in, get those VC bucks, and make Snapchats and Clinkles when
we could be doing so much more.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Sometimes when my current project isn't doing well I have dark days where I
explore my backup plan.

Thinking about which niche to master and what content marketing to do to pull
in $200 an hour, kicking myself for missed opportunities, wishing I'd done
things differently so I wouldn't be faced with such an unsavoury prospect as
working for someone else...

And then I pinch myself. Because you know what? We have it fucking easy. Other
people do real work for a living and make a tenth as much as the potential of
most here, and that's just in the same country.

You can't have it both ways. We are overpaid by the same free market that you
do hastily criticise, for exactly the same reason our managers and VCs are.
You want to complain about them? Then complain about us. We aren't special
snowflakes fighting for truth and honour, we are tradesmen settling our
services for as much cash as we can get away with. And business is booming.

I like your posts, mainly because nobody else here is really supplying the
same viewport, but your tendency to rationalise away an us and them attitude
is a bit disturbing to me, like you're arguing from self interest rather than
consistent philosophy.

~~~
geebee
It's illuminating to look at salaries for other workers in high cost regions
such as silicon valley or San Francisco.

[http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-
jobs/rankings/the-100-b...](http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-
jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs)

In San Francisco, the median salary of a software developer working in San
Francisco is $114,400. ("average" here is median according to BLS data). It's
considerably higher in San Jose apparently, at $131,270k a year.

By contrast, the median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is
$112,970 a year.

[http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-
hygienist/s...](http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-
hygienist/salary)

For registered nurses in SF, it's $127,670

I'm glad that dental hygienists and registered nurses are paid well, but why
would programmers, supposedly in such desperately short supply that the US
president needs to do press appearances with tech CEOs to help recruit more
people into the field, need to pinch themselves for earning roughly the same
salary as a dental hygienist?

On the bright side, if that dental hygienist and software developer get
married and have kids, and the programmer manages not to be a casualty of age
discrimination, they can probably afford a house as long as they both continue
to work full time. They will need to deal with the roughly $20,000K+ costs of
child care, though, if they take this route.

~~~
thecage411
Great point. Also -- at least at the hospital I'm familiar with in SF -- those
registered nurses work 36 hours a week (three 12-hour shifts a week).

It's hard to see how being an RN isn't a better job than being a software
developer in SF...

~~~
geebee
My guess is that being a nurse is a fairly tough job. Nurses are well
respected and (at least in SF) paid well, as they should be.

I can see reasons why people would want to be nurses or dental hygienists
rather than developers, and vice-versa. if you consider pay, training, the
possibility of age-related discrimination, career stability, the ability to
scale back for a while while you have kids without compromising your ability
to get back into the field later… all in all, I think that the decision to
avoid software development in favor of other career paths is a very rational
one.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's necessarily irrational to go into
software development, at all. It can be the right choice for some people. I
just don't think the case for software development as a career compared to
other options available[1] to high talent, academically inclined people is
anywhere near compelling enough to be talking about a "shortage" of software
developers.

[1] the right to live and work in the US at the time you are making your
career decisions is a major factor in what options you have available, of
course.

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Dewie
Weird intro.

