[alkonaut]

I think these niche but loved language are great ways to attract talent. I’m a senior C#/java dev but I dabble with F#,Rust and Elm on the side. I have mentioned to lots of recruiters that I’m interested in new opportunities only if they mean I can switch to one of these languages. I know lots of people in my situation (from meetups etc).

There are few experienced Elm and Rust devs to recruit from, but there are tons of very experienced developers who would take a pay cut just to work with these languages.

What people know and what people want to work with are in my experience very loosely related.

[haolez]

I would guess that what makes these languages attractive is that, if you end up working in a project that uses one of them, it’s likely to be a new project with almost no technical debt.

I bet that an old and badly designed Elm app would be just as bad to work with.

[rtfeldman]

> I bet that an old and badly designed Elm app would be just as bad to work with.

Not at all!

My company has used Elm since 2015, and I'd be happier maintaining our 4-year-old Elm code from before we knew what we were doing to any modern JS or TS project that's been built optimally according to any definition of JS/TS best practices you like.

I don't think that's an uncommon view among people who have used both Elm and JS/TS in production for a few months.

It's a pretty night and day difference in experience - that's why people who use Elm on the side for awhile so often end up valuing the opportunity to use it at work too.

[alkonaut]

I think the most attractive thing would be working with others who are also interested in languages.

I definitely believe that functional code bases rot less/slower than imperative/OO code bases. If it’s because the functional code bases are written by “better developers” that’s an even stronger argument for aiming for taking a job using one.

[pjmlp]

I used to think like that, then I realized that even the famous offshoring shops now also get projects done in those languages, with the same quality you would expect from their typically enterprise project deliverables.

[pm90]

Never be surprised at the capacity for these offshoring shops to write bad code. They excel at this art, for any language.

Jokes aside, there are structural reasons for this phenomena, but the most obvious and pithy one is simply: you get what you paid for.

[TurboHaskal]

That might have been true a few years ago. Today, there are plenty of entry level jobs using functional languages.

[ronanyeah]

Also I don't think anyone believes the infinite amount of JS developers makes it any easier to identify a good React hire.