Being reasonable

Recently changed job after about 5 years. The earlier job was becoming a bit of more managerial than technical.

One of the attractions of the new job was that the existing products are written in scala, clojure in addition to some usual technologies. Due to an earlier manager, I had been a little curious about clojure, and scala is the goto choice for data related things in JVM space. So was looking for an opportunity to work on these. It is possibly true- sounds like Sufi (?) philosophy- that the thing that you want to express is actually trying to express itself through you. So, hopefully the job will be good.

Now about a different side of the coin. People with typically C type syntax (java, c++, etc) background end up so used to that syntax that anything else looks foreign (clojure’s lisp-y syntax). Even the ideas like functional programming sound like buzzwords. The rationalization is generally of the kind ‘we are here to solve business problem; technology is just means to do that, we want to maintain the code we write, recruiting for esoteric tech stack is difficult, nobody is using those, etc.’

When do people become so case hardened? And why? Obviously the arguments above are valid. But because of their validity, these get used as a barrier to anything that is challenging to your current mental model.

When do people become so- to repeat the expression- case hardened? I guess it happens after people become parents (I am borrowing the idea from Jerry Seinfeld here- ‘The hell with the world; I can make my own people’). And when people form an idea of how the life can be lived. When basic needs are met, after they have weathered initial challenges of early, mid-careers phases, when other aspects of life become more important, etc. Then anything out of the ordinary looks a little out of place. Also, why are people so confident that they don’t have much idea about? I would first like to to a thing before making up my mind about it.

Similar thing seems to be happening in the clojure/ scala set up. I would not mind it much except, the arguments look closer to derision than actual rational technical or managerial ideas. On the other hand, interesting set up. I mean it. Things like these make it an interesting set up. I can think of better ways to make it more interesting, but it’s interesting nonetheless.