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Unpopular Programming Languages That Are Still Lucrative
Nerval's Lobster writes In theory, learning less-popular programming languages could end up paying off big—provided the programmers who pursue them play their proverbial cards right. And as with any good card game, there's a considerable element of chance involved: In order to land a great job, you need to become an expert in a language, which involves a considerable amount of work with no guarantee of a payoff. With that in mind, do you think it's worth learning R, Scala, Haskell, Clojure, or even COBOL (the lattermost is still in use among companies with decades-old infrastructure, and they reportedly have trouble filling jobs that rely on it)? Or is it better to devote your precious hours and memory to popular, much-used languages that have a lot of use out there?
Haskell code never has any bugs. But that's just because it's never used in production.
I learned the one, what's it called? it has the little turtle that moves around in straight lines? Is that one still in use?
Ah, you're thinking of LOGO. It isn't widely used anymore, except as a niche language for cruise missile guidance systems.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The actual cards would be those 80 column things that the ancient languages were stored (and inpuy) on.
I work for a financial institution that rhymes with race, and im paid handsomly for nothing short of necromancy and time travel. my cobol applications interface with 50 year old cobol applications, which in turn interface with java, which runs in a godless vortex of jboss and tomcat. the accounts division I write for is beginning to suspect im some kind of evil witch that lives on the 5th floor and creates their reports over a fuming cauldron. I have in the past transferred money in my checking account using the original cobol-85 nested subprograms written to handle some of the first ATM's ever invented. Security has, on two separate occasions, mistaken me for a hobo trying to steal a laptop.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Reminds me of a good joke:
In 2010, a COBOL programmer developed a rare fatal disease for which there was no known cure. The programmer was cryogenically frozen, to be revived when a cure had been found.
In the year 9999, the programmer is revived. When he wakes up, he asks the doctors what year it is, and when they tell him, he asks if they finally found a cure for his disease. They answered, "We're sorry, but no, we still haven't found a cure. But it's almost the year 10,000, you see, and you know COBOL..."
Ah, you're thinking of LOGO. It isn't widely used anymore, except as a niche language for cruise missile guidance systems.
[Image of panicking missile controllers attempting to abort an erroneous launch by frantically typing PEN UP repeatedly.]
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'