4 ms·

> here are so many languages that would be obvious better choices, but part of what allows a legacy of sledge hammered test cases to evolve is respecting the ga

by vosper 7y ago

> here are so many languages that would be obvious better choices, but part of what allows a legacy of sledge hammered test cases to evolve is respecting the garden they are grown in - generally when you transplant a tree, you're going to kill it. Instead, a careful analysis of the existing implementation has allowed that product to continue, and grow, for many, many years. I love the way you put this. My team is in the middle of an IMO largely pointless port of working code from Scala to JS, because some senior people think Scala is icky... (Even though my team is a JS team, I don't think JS is a better language than Scala. To the objection I get: "we can't find Scala engineers" I point out that JS engineers on my team have had to learn to read Scala in order to port the code, so they're halfway there already...)

goatlover 7y ago
> "we can't find Scala engineers" Is there such a thing as a PL engineer? I thought it was software engineer, and the particular language matters less than general software principles and practices. Plus, any new employee is going to have to learn the code base regardless of whether they start out knowing the language. Any software engineer should be able to learn a new language. The idea that you have to higher engineers who already know the language, particularly a high level general purpose one, seems suspect. It's not like they're writing some low level Rust or C code. It seems like a poor reason to port a code base, but I guess it happens often enough.
- vosper 7y ago
  > Any software engineer should be able to learn a new language. The idea that you have to higher engineers who already know the language, particularly a high level general purpose one, seems suspect. It's not like they're writing some low level Rust or C code. Yeah, I agree. And I'm doubtful that the time it would take for one or two competent people to come up to speed in Scala is less than the time we're spending to port the entire thing over to JS. It's months of engineering time. That time could have been spent improving the existing codebase rather than the much riskier option of porting to a new language. And then that team would have the Scala engineers it needs, for ongoing work. Or at least a shared resource to help out.
- SaxonRobber 7y ago
  Most developers aren’t software engineers, they are coders who just jump on the hottest JS trend or are utterly content with Enterprise Java mediocrity. Their entire lens is warped by a narrow view of “coding” and are incapable of programming anything beyond that frame.
blt 7y ago
I'm sorry. It sounds like your management is misguided.

by vosper 7y ago

goatlover 7y ago

> "we can't find Scala engineers" Is there such a thing as a PL engineer? I thought it was software engineer, and the particular language matters less than general software principles and practices. Plus, any new employee is going to have to learn the code base regardless of whether they start out knowing the language. Any software engineer should be able to learn a new language. The idea that you have to higher engineers who already know the language, particularly a high level general purpose one, seems suspect. It's not like they're writing some low level Rust or C code. It seems like a poor reason to port a code base, but I guess it happens often enough.

vosper 7y ago
> Any software engineer should be able to learn a new language. The idea that you have to higher engineers who already know the language, particularly a high level general purpose one, seems suspect. It's not like they're writing some low level Rust or C code. Yeah, I agree. And I'm doubtful that the time it would take for one or two competent people to come up to speed in Scala is less than the time we're spending to port the entire thing over to JS. It's months of engineering time. That time could have been spent improving the existing codebase rather than the much riskier option of porting to a new language. And then that team would have the Scala engineers it needs, for ongoing work. Or at least a shared resource to help out.
SaxonRobber 7y ago
Most developers aren’t software engineers, they are coders who just jump on the hottest JS trend or are utterly content with Enterprise Java mediocrity. Their entire lens is warped by a narrow view of “coding” and are incapable of programming anything beyond that frame.

blt 7y ago

I'm sorry. It sounds like your management is misguided.