4 ms·

> the easiest path is to pick "boring" technology that still super valuable to the business, with a long shelf-life, but not sexy. Would PHP and Ruby still fit

> the easiest path is to pick "boring" technology that still super valuable to the business, with a long shelf-life, but not sexy. Would PHP and Ruby still fit this? Not just the "boring" part but also the long shelf life? These have been my main standbys but a lot of things in the web are moving away from them. Should I jump back to things I haven't used in a long time? I don't know how much Magento has changed over the years but I get some recruiter emails about it, even 8 years after I last used it on the job.

brundolf 6y ago
Here's one possibility: if you have PHP experience, maybe become a Wordpress expert. The legions of legacy Wordpress sites out there will outlive us all, and most of the rest of us don't want to touch them with a 10ft pole.
quickthrower2 6y ago
I think if top salary isn’t an issue, then these are fine technologies to find a legacy maintenance job, or even greenfield. I think they are fine platforms but fashions are what they are.
guitarbill 6y ago
Big caveat: I don't know much about your position or where you're located. Sometimes that matters; Cobol, Fortran, Ada, Perl, etc are still around but job opportunities vary. If I had to guess, places that use them are less likely to offer remote working soon. Also, nobody can predict the future. How longer shelf-life do you need? 10 years? 20 years? You might've moved to e.g. product or program management by then. I want an easy life, too, and don't plan on sticking to programming the whole time. I figure I'll know more in ~10-15 years. Anyway... Ruby on Rails is still well and alive (see Ruby 3.0, and the recent mimemagic issue), overall I think PHP is more widely deployed (and alive, see the recent malicious commits to PHP. worth exploiting like that = people use it and update it). As brundolf said, Wordpress is everywhere. You could go off the one you prefer more, but I'd definitely recommend reaching out to contacts and just casually surveying if they know what places use what to give you an idea of your local situation.

brundolf 6y ago

Here's one possibility: if you have PHP experience, maybe become a Wordpress expert. The legions of legacy Wordpress sites out there will outlive us all, and most of the rest of us don't want to touch them with a 10ft pole.

quickthrower2 6y ago

I think if top salary isn’t an issue, then these are fine technologies to find a legacy maintenance job, or even greenfield. I think they are fine platforms but fashions are what they are.

guitarbill 6y ago

Big caveat: I don't know much about your position or where you're located. Sometimes that matters; Cobol, Fortran, Ada, Perl, etc are still around but job opportunities vary. If I had to guess, places that use them are less likely to offer remote working soon. Also, nobody can predict the future. How longer shelf-life do you need? 10 years? 20 years? You might've moved to e.g. product or program management by then. I want an easy life, too, and don't plan on sticking to programming the whole time. I figure I'll know more in ~10-15 years. Anyway... Ruby on Rails is still well and alive (see Ruby 3.0, and the recent mimemagic issue), overall I think PHP is more widely deployed (and alive, see the recent malicious commits to PHP. worth exploiting like that = people use it and update it). As brundolf said, Wordpress is everywhere. You could go off the one you prefer more, but I'd definitely recommend reaching out to contacts and just casually surveying if they know what places use what to give you an idea of your local situation.