3 ms·

I think an analogy would be the following: You need to hammer a nail in a piece of wood. You could do this with a screwdriver but hammer is better suited for th

I think an analogy would be the following: You need to hammer a nail in a piece of wood. You could do this with a screwdriver but hammer is better suited for the job. However, a hammer made out of glass is less useful than the screwdriver. In other words, some kinds of tools are better suited for a problem than others, but there exist tools that inferior even though they were designed to solve your original problem. You should pick the best tool for the job. It might be unclear what that tool is and some tools are better than others at solving the same problem, even if they are designed to solve the same problem.

codyb 7y ago
I think parents point was, for whom does the hammer made of glass helpfully accomplish anything for?
devin 7y ago
I take your point, but can we avoid this analogy please? Let’s talk about actual code if we’re going to talk about the best tool for a job that requires it. It reminds me of something early in my career that irked me like few work-related things things have: “Building software is like building a house” — No, it isn’t. Not even a little bit.
- orange8 7y ago
  I think it is more like growing a garden.
  - mehh 7y ago
    I prefer making the distributed club sandwich analogy ...
    - orange8 7y ago
      Never heard of that one, and if it works for you then more power to you! Analogy's are all about making sense of new data using older previously understood data, so if the old reference doesn't ring any bells... you just need to find one that does.
  - gitgud 7y ago
    Sometimes I feel like a gardener tending to the code base. Pruning deadcode and planting new modules...
hvidgaard 7y ago
One of the main problems I have with that analogy is that a language is not like a tool at all. Frameworks and libraries are like tools. Different classes are like a different flavor of tools - Haskell/ML, C#/Java, and a plethora of others.

codyb 7y ago

I think parents point was, for whom does the hammer made of glass helpfully accomplish anything for?

devin 7y ago

I take your point, but can we avoid this analogy please? Let’s talk about actual code if we’re going to talk about the best tool for a job that requires it. It reminds me of something early in my career that irked me like few work-related things things have: “Building software is like building a house” — No, it isn’t. Not even a little bit.

orange8 7y ago
I think it is more like growing a garden.
- mehh 7y ago
  I prefer making the distributed club sandwich analogy ...
  - orange8 7y ago
    Never heard of that one, and if it works for you then more power to you! Analogy's are all about making sense of new data using older previously understood data, so if the old reference doesn't ring any bells... you just need to find one that does.
- gitgud 7y ago
  Sometimes I feel like a gardener tending to the code base. Pruning deadcode and planting new modules...

hvidgaard 7y ago

One of the main problems I have with that analogy is that a language is not like a tool at all. Frameworks and libraries are like tools. Different classes are like a different flavor of tools - Haskell/ML, C#/Java, and a plethora of others.