4 ms·

Be sure to view this through the lens of 2002, where Python is still a niche language and Perl is only used by certain UNIX crazies, at least in the eyes of mos

by jerf 6y ago

Be sure to view this through the lens of 2002, where Python is still a niche language and Perl is only used by certain UNIX crazies, at least in the eyes of most of the business competition of the time. Most statically-typed languages are fairly awful at this point and you could get big wins by switching to something else. A language I consider fatally flawed in 2020 could be a huge differential advantage in 2002, because the competition is that much worse. In 2020, I think we have many more viable languages that have squeezed out the sort of general crappiness we had in 2002 in programming languages, and the ability of a startup to choose $LANGUAGE and attain a systematic multiplicative advantage over incumbents is small. You have a modest opportunity to win over incumbents by choosing better operational mechanisms (I call it "marginal" because the incumbents are switching to k8s or whatever at a decent speed too), but mostly your big technical advantage is the ability to greenfield something, even as it is also a nearly-crippling disadvantage in some ways too.

paganel 6y ago
> Be sure to view this through the lens of 2002 Those were definitely interesting times. I'd say that Perl was a little bit more generalist, though, it was not exactly down at the PHP level but was what "serious" websites were using (I say that as a guy who started to learn Python in 2003 because I was too afraid to start and learn Perl). Back to the post, I wonder if reddit would have still been picked by YC if it hadn't been originally written in Lisp (this I think was late 2004, early 2005?). I'm sure the whole story is written somewhere in a blog-post/dedicated reddit thread but I'm too lazy to check right now.
JohnL4 6y ago
"Python was a niche language"? What niche were you in in 2002? Java was going great guns and Pascal/Delphi were definitely a thing. Or are you just saying "a pox on all statically-typed houses"?
- coldtea 6y ago
  >"Python was a niche language"? What niche were you in in 2002? Don't know about the parent, but I did use Python from 2000 to mid-2000s doing web programming - mostly Zope. So there's that...
- jerf 6y ago
  I can't parse your comment properly, but the answer is in the Perl and Python niche. So I know it was a niche. It was farther along then than, say, Nim is now, but if you started your job search out and limited it to just Perl and Python, and I'll even toss in PHP for free, you cut out 90%+ of the listings. Of course, you only need that one job. But it was nowhere near as useful as C++, Visual Basic, or even Java already. (Sun spent a crapton of money buying Java credibility, and it worked! I'm not sure it ever profited them, but by golly it worked. It came out of the gate far stronger than its technical internals at the time warranted.) And in 2002, "one job" was hard to find....
fulafel 6y ago
You might be right that that's how a Lisp advocate might have viewed Python and Perl back then but in reality they (plus PHP) were the go-to tools of the day for non-enterprise web programmers. Enterprisey people would view this as cowboy development.

by jerf 6y ago

paganel 6y ago

> Be sure to view this through the lens of 2002 Those were definitely interesting times. I'd say that Perl was a little bit more generalist, though, it was not exactly down at the PHP level but was what "serious" websites were using (I say that as a guy who started to learn Python in 2003 because I was too afraid to start and learn Perl). Back to the post, I wonder if reddit would have still been picked by YC if it hadn't been originally written in Lisp (this I think was late 2004, early 2005?). I'm sure the whole story is written somewhere in a blog-post/dedicated reddit thread but I'm too lazy to check right now.

JohnL4 6y ago

"Python was a niche language"? What niche were you in in 2002? Java was going great guns and Pascal/Delphi were definitely a thing. Or are you just saying "a pox on all statically-typed houses"?

coldtea 6y ago
>"Python was a niche language"? What niche were you in in 2002? Don't know about the parent, but I did use Python from 2000 to mid-2000s doing web programming - mostly Zope. So there's that...
jerf 6y ago
I can't parse your comment properly, but the answer is in the Perl and Python niche. So I know it was a niche. It was farther along then than, say, Nim is now, but if you started your job search out and limited it to just Perl and Python, and I'll even toss in PHP for free, you cut out 90%+ of the listings. Of course, you only need that one job. But it was nowhere near as useful as C++, Visual Basic, or even Java already. (Sun spent a crapton of money buying Java credibility, and it worked! I'm not sure it ever profited them, but by golly it worked. It came out of the gate far stronger than its technical internals at the time warranted.) And in 2002, "one job" was hard to find....

fulafel 6y ago

You might be right that that's how a Lisp advocate might have viewed Python and Perl back then but in reality they (plus PHP) were the go-to tools of the day for non-enterprise web programmers. Enterprisey people would view this as cowboy development.