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> hiring is a factor to consider when choosing the stack Personally I would not let hiring determine what stack you use. In the end if it gets the job done, is

> hiring is a factor to consider when choosing the stack Personally I would not let hiring determine what stack you use. In the end if it gets the job done, is tested, commented, and can be proudly passed on to other engineers, then it is suitable. One more thing I found with 'stacks' is they are not as solid as they seem, and can be swapped out with other ones, but only as needed. It is common to switch between multiple stacks throught the day. "Doing everything one step at a time, in parallel" as they say.

collyw 11y ago
Depends what you are doing and where you are going. A friend of mine had a startup company a couple of years ago. He chose the language - Python, next choice was Java, and next was C I think (to me the differences his choice of languages shows a lack of understanding in the trade offs between each). As he was non technical, I assume he just listened to other bioinformaticans telling him what was great. Anyway, he got a product produced (Python and Django / JavaScript front end) and had the option of a German grant to keep the project going. The amount of money offered was fine for someone out of University, but wasn't enough for an experienced dev. Anyway, despite using a solid choice of language / framework, he couldn't find a dev to continue the project. My guess is that if he had chosen PHP, he the project would have continued.
- getdavidhiggins 11y ago
  Yeah but programming languages are an abstraction layer on top of already existing architectures which are not going away any time soon. X86, ARM, etc. So as long as code can talk to low level hardware and get executed, it doesn't really matter what you language you're using. I can understand the need to have others pick up from where you left off, but that's introducing politics into programming, and more oft than not, it confuses what you're trying to achieve (which is converting some form of input to output I hope) As a first port of call, it would be preferable to know one low level language like C, and a scripting / CRUD language like PHP/JS, as a lot of application development now is web based. Bonus points for learning ASM as that's as low level as we can get. (Unless you work in an Intel chip facility and are not allowed tell people what you're working on).

collyw 11y ago

Depends what you are doing and where you are going. A friend of mine had a startup company a couple of years ago. He chose the language - Python, next choice was Java, and next was C I think (to me the differences his choice of languages shows a lack of understanding in the trade offs between each). As he was non technical, I assume he just listened to other bioinformaticans telling him what was great. Anyway, he got a product produced (Python and Django / JavaScript front end) and had the option of a German grant to keep the project going. The amount of money offered was fine for someone out of University, but wasn't enough for an experienced dev. Anyway, despite using a solid choice of language / framework, he couldn't find a dev to continue the project. My guess is that if he had chosen PHP, he the project would have continued.

getdavidhiggins 11y ago
Yeah but programming languages are an abstraction layer on top of already existing architectures which are not going away any time soon. X86, ARM, etc. So as long as code can talk to low level hardware and get executed, it doesn't really matter what you language you're using. I can understand the need to have others pick up from where you left off, but that's introducing politics into programming, and more oft than not, it confuses what you're trying to achieve (which is converting some form of input to output I hope) As a first port of call, it would be preferable to know one low level language like C, and a scripting / CRUD language like PHP/JS, as a lot of application development now is web based. Bonus points for learning ASM as that's as low level as we can get. (Unless you work in an Intel chip facility and are not allowed tell people what you're working on).