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by asmala 5171 days ago
Indeed, the developer base around Clojure and core libraries seems to have reached a critical mass so the continuity in that front is no longer a real concern.

However, I think the question was about projects built with Clojure, i.e. how to ensure that future developers in the company I work for will be able to continue where I left off? The global Clojure talent pool, while growing, is still on the small side (e.g. compared to even Ruby).
1 comments
rbxbx 5171 days ago
I think this is a moot point, as we've seen time and time again using technologies such as Clojure/OCaml/Haskell/Etc is a boon for hiring great talent, not the other way around.

http://janestreet.com/minsky_weeks-jfp_18.pdf See part 4 "Personnel" for Jane Street's experience hiring OCaml devs.

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asmala 5171 days ago
An excellent point. Definitely something we should all keep in mind when promoting cutting edge tech choices.

That said, I don't think the matter is quite that straightforward where I come from; I would imagine Clojure dev head count in the whole of Finland is in the low double digits. If I were making business decisions involving future staffing, I would not feel confident I could replace the (hypothetical) only in-house Clojure dev in this job market.

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puredanger 5171 days ago
We have a team of Clojure devs and I think all but one of us has learned Clojure "on the job". Clojure is not hard to learn, imho.
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pron 5171 days ago
But what's the number of good developers? I think the point is that good developers can learn whatever language they need. You don't need to hire Clojure developers.
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greiskul 5171 days ago
Yes, thats something that some people don't seen to get. Good developers not only can learn new languages as needed, but they will learn new languages and idioms with time, else they will quickly become obsolete.
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rbxbx 5171 days ago
I'm also a pretty big proponent of distributed teams :)

That said, as others have noted, if you're hiring quality people, there's no reason they can't learn Clojure on the job. Plus if you make an investment in your people they're more likely to be invested in you ;)

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