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Comment by iagovar | Hacker News Reader

So, as a self-taught programmer looking for future job prospects... is this a signal to learn rust?

Not learning Rust or C (what it's replacing in this context) will probably not seriously dent your career prospects unless your career is already in systems programming.

Learning a language people do systems programming in can be a good experience but it doesn't need to be Rust for you to get that experience.

If you want to learn Rust because you want to, that's fair too.

Learning new languages is always good, as it teaches us about new ways to approach solving problems.

Now, if you plan to do any kind of systems programming, C and C++ are unavoiable, as that is what the majority of the jobs still expect one to use.

Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are using Rust in their products, that alone is probably a good signal.

Also, if you're "just starting" don't burden yourself with legacy stuff. Unlearning that when starting with Rust isn't a cake walk.

Im pretty fresh, but I do intend to learn some legacy so I can comprehend code from other people.

Most of your job will involve taking user data, validating it, putting it into some database, then retrieving and serving it, probably as JSON.

You may edit an HTML template here and there.

Maybe even some configuration work for CI/CD.

Rinse, repeat, with whatever new language/framework is hot right now.

Basically, you will be solving the same set of problems on every job, but in more convoluted and unnecessary ways, because the guy who worked at Google says that's how they do it over at the FAANG.

This is true for some jobs, but not for 'specialised' roles like game dev, systems dev, robotics, etc. There is an escape!

If you have passion for that kind of stuff and that is your "thing", yes, of course. But most of the time, we just got rent to pay and there is not enough room for experiments with your life and career. Experiment in college, kids, while you can make mistakes - including sexy mistakes.

Really? I assumed if you are on HN you probably enjoy tech enough that it's not just to pay rent. Maybe I misunderstood your comment.

There are a lot of people on HN that are just stuck in this industry because it pays correctly but are doing things that are far from what they expected when they started. Please don't exclude them for no reason.

That's fair. I just didn't like the negative-sounding comment that it will always end up with CRUD-for-rent. If people enjoy business line apps thats awesome, it can be fun, but there are alternative roles out there too.

To be fair, even if it’s off topic, finding a job in this industry is stupidly easy. Finding a job that is fulfilling, well paid, and in a great company is difficult.

And I don’t even mean it’s a tragedy : I largely prefer doing CRUD-for-rent in a great company than technically fulfilling job under asshole management in some unstable startup.

No. I am on HN to get downvotes when I point out that Peter Thiel is a douchebag.

whomst among us doesn't love a vampire that mainlines the blood of teenagers?

The kind of post you write when you think the web is the world.

I was being half-sarcastic. But, if you take most jobs out there, and you reduce them to the barebones of what it is you do every day, like really distill it - it's that.

I've never in my life worked on a professional project I could describe this way. this might be the most common path but it's far from the only one.

That depends.

Rust is a pretty good language but it's not the most used. Also you have to take into account that you can't use Rust on every field.

If you're looking to be an Android/iOS/web dev, Rust is not the best option.

From a professional perspective, what do you want to work on?

Web technologies? CI/CD, IT automation, etc.?

Or something more like operating systems, robotics, hardware, drivers?

Or do you want to self-educate for the sake of it, to learn different paradigms and be a better programmer in general? (Everyone wants to do this, but not everyone has the time).

Golang and Python are incredibly popular in the automation/"glue code" space.

Java is popular in enterprise development (think banks).

Systems languages are popular if you're developing... systems.

Try it. Many like Rust because it's a lot of fun. If you think it's fun, then that's a great thing for you.

Depends what you want to work on. Relative to other software projects, not many jobs involve kernel development, and those that do will mostly continue to use C, as it's production-ready for the Linux kernel, and development often involves extending or modifying existing code.

No. Rust jobs are a niche - not even 0.1 % of the jobs out there. Most jobs are in frontend, mobile or standard business backends. So Java, C#, Python or Go are much better choices regarding job prospects and going to be for a long time to come.

For fun and interest? Why not?

I think it's worth looking at purely for the interesting type system and other language features. These tend to help you when using other languages.

One of many signals. Yes. Not because there are a lot of kernel programming jobs, but because Rust has gained a lot of credibility.

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