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Yaron Minsky said in one of his talks that hiring OCaml programmers was the easiest thing in the world: he posted an ad on the mailing list, got 20 applications, 15 of which were worthy of a phone interview. Of those 15, 5 were asked to come in for an in-person interview and 3 of those were hired.

Sure, he might not be able to hire 80 programmers in one batch, but I don't think Jane Street would need to do that, or that they are worried about a shortage of OCaml programmers. Also, I would be more confident of the capabilities of an OCaml programmer than of a PHP programmer.



And, as an OCaml programmer, if you were not one of those lucky 3, where would you work other than Jane Street?


At the PHP shop.


All sorts of places.

I'd be willing to wager that there's hardly an OCaml programmer in this world who isn't also skilled in a few other languages.


That still doesn't make a case to learn OCaml.

What it means is, People who learn OCaml generally have to learn something else too. Because the jobs just aren't there. Which in case the person is better off learning that something else properly.

And that is a very big problem.


I generally pass over resumes where someone doesn't list at least one programming language that isn't very marketable, fashionable, or part of C's extended family. It's a quick way to winnow out folks for whom programming is likely to be more than just a paycheck.


At a Scala or an Erlang or a Clojure shop, I expect :-)




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