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They're probably bothered because of the realisation that the foundation of their toolset is made of clay tied together with duct tape. And one can only add so
by blub 11y ago
They're probably bothered because of the realisation that the foundation of their toolset is made of clay tied together with duct tape.
And one can only add so much to the typical web development toolchain before if falls down like a house of cards.
To me it's surprising to see some people finally begin to figure out that dynamic typing, monkey patching, importing packages upon packages can only get you so far. Yesterday it was Ruby, today it's node.js.
Maybe tomorrow we'll have something that doesn't have to be replaced in 6 years again.
- rorykoehler 11y agoI don't see the problem. If you get so far and then need to do something else, only then is the time to start worrying about doing something else. Until that point the focus should be on shipping a quality product that satisfies a need. Do that well enough and you will be in a position to start worrying about using better languages for certain problems. Almost every tech company that is slightly mature has multiple languages in production anyhow and they got there because they built stuff and shipped it.
- blub 11y agoThe big question is if they got there because of the tools and practices they use or in spite of them. With enough money and talent one can use pretty much anything. And the problem with having to rewrite your stuff is that the company might go out of business while doing it. Assuming it's something complex, and not e.g. reddit (which I suppose is not at all easy to build as a full product, but at the end of the day is an online forum)
- rorykoehler 11y agoIf your company goes out of business because you spend time re-architecting then you're doing it wrong. The thing with stuff like Rails is that we don't need money to start quickly. They are amazing for validating a business idea and doing fast iterative agile development which is the core to building a successful startup. Once you've done that and have either cashflow or serious funding you can afford to pull out some functionality into separate services with more appropriate architecture etc. For what most MVP's are, tools like Rails are very good as they optimise for build speed. Clearly they can't do everything and shouldn't be used for some things but for most web things they are a solid choice. Companies that optimise prematurely are far more likely to go out of business.
- chris_wot 11y agoFunny thing for a C++ programmer to say...
- blub 11y agoNot really. I fully admit that C++ has its share of problems and the tools too. However, it's a known quantity and one can build upon previous knowledge. I won't have to learn a new framework because it's the cool new thing or rewrite everything in X because I had en epiphany, it's too slow or doesn't run on some platform. I can focus on solving problems and improving my skillset. C++ is a tool, not a way of life and it gives one a surprising amount of mileage. It was used 20 years ago, it evolves and will probably still be used in 20 years to come.
- chris_wot 11y agoC++14 is not your father's C++, and C++17 will not be your grandfather's C++.
- blub 11y agoPerfect skill reuse does not exist in our industry, one can at best hope that when the next thing hits one doesn't have to learn it from scratch. C++ offers a good compromise between evolution and stability IMO, I could go back to doing C++03 and the tools, libraries, etc would still be there.
- chris_wot 11y agoYou could do the same in Ruby!