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My problem with these arguments from PG is that they require that you pretend (or ignore) all the real world evidence we have about what languages are actually

My problem with these arguments from PG is that they require that you pretend (or ignore) all the real world evidence we have about what languages are actually useful to make things with. It’s all fine and well to talk about how great X and Y is, but meanwhile most people are actually making things in Java and Go.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
But what real world evidence do we have? Mostly that languages "most people are actually making things in" are picked by the business on the basis of popularity, which is determined mostly by what people learn in university - which is determined mostly by what is currently most popular on the job market. It's a self-sustaining feedback loop that has little to do with relative utility of languages for real-world problems (at least discounting languages' library ecosystems).
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  This argument is self refuting. If inferior programming languages are being picked continuously by “the business”, we’d expect that businesses that pick “superior” programming languages to out compete the other businesses. We don’t see this, so one of the following is true: 1) Programming language quality is a non-factor in business success. 2) People like PG are wrong about what makes one language superior to another. By the by, I have never seen a non-programmer executive demand a “bad” language be used for a startup. What I tend to see is grizzled ex-programmers ignoring the trends and picking the reliable and “boring” choice over the complaints of some IC’s. This is less a “clueless business” issue and more an acknowledgment of an unpopular truth: picking the boring language that lets the business focus on its core domain is better than picking something that excites the most vocal engineers.
  - mst 5y ago
    The claim that learning weird languages will help you learn new ways of thinking about problems that may be helpful in other langauges, and the claim that using 'boring' languages is the correct default for building production systems, in no way contradict.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Do what you will with your own time, I’m no longer convinced that learning “weird” languages is an effective way to become a better programmer. From my experience as an IC and as a manager, learning how to write better is probably a better investment for professional growth, second to that would be better distributed system design. If it pleases you, feel free to learn whatever. It’s why I know Rust and Haskell personally. But as career advice I am much more dubious, even though I once agreed with you.
      - mst 5y ago
        I find that for a lot of problems reasoning about the core problem using a mental model akin to lisp makes it easier for me to come to a sufficiently clear understanding to be able to better express the solution in both code and prose. So while I agree about writing prose, it's also true that learning lisp made me a better documenter.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        Having worked professionally in lisp, I have no idea why people say this.
        mst 5y ago
        Programming is full of things where what works for one person isn't at all what works for another.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        Which is why I said “I have no idea” rather than “it doesn’t work that way”.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > If inferior programming languages are being picked continuously by “the business”, we’d expect that businesses that pick “superior” programming languages to out compete the other businesses. That assumes that the software business is efficient in the market sense, which my experience suggests is very much not true. On the contrary, I've found that success hinges primarily on the ability to find and execute good business deals (which is the work of executive team and/or sales&marketing). Software side has so much slack in it that it can (and often does) do extremely bad job at making the actual thing and still succeed. > I have never seen a non-programmer executive demand a “bad” language be used for a startup. I've worked for one many years ago. I was actually promised the free reign over technology stack for a project, until the CEO decided to override me and order me to use a very particular and shitty combination of technologies. He was very up-front with me about his reasoning: he said, "yeah, I could let you write this in something more reasonable, say Ruby or Python, but programmers for those languages are expensive, PHP programmers are much cheaper, and I'm going to be hiring more people to help you". (I run the project solo for the next year, because he eventually decided not to hire anyone.) > picking the boring language that lets the business focus on its core domain is better than picking something that excites the most vocal engineers. Be careful not to mix up topics here. What usually "excites the most vocal engineers" these days is the things they can use to pad their CVs. This usually goes against what the management wants, which is whatever stack they've read about on HBR or whatever one is cheapest to hire people for. Neither of those tend to have anything to do with powerful and advanced tooling.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      > That assumes that the software business is efficient in the market sense, which my experience suggests is very much not true. On the contrary, I've found that success hinges primarily on the ability to find and execute good business deals (which is the work of executive team and/or sales&marketing). Software side has so much slack in it that it can (and often does) do extremely bad job at making the actual thing and still succeed. I actually covered this in literally the next line.
      - xpe 5y ago
- kortilla 5y ago
  This is bullshit because popular languages have changed and emerged from outside of university (see Go, Python, etc that had no university presence and exploded in popularity in industry).
franga2000 5y ago
You don't have to use a language to benefit from its existence. Haskell is a weird language that nobody* uses in production, but it's where a lot of functional programming concepts were refined and ultimately made their way into mainstream languages. I use functional programming tools in Java and JS very often and they only exist because many people tried Haskell, saw the potential of this new* paradigm and implemented parts of it into their environments. Similarly, having been forced to learn Prolog in university, I now have a completely different view of solving problems. And while I'll surely never touch Prolog again, this new perspective allows me to write much better code in some cases, despite working in a completely different language.
- hiepph 5y ago
  I second this. It's always about learning the mindset even if you don't use it for real life. Same for learning mathematics, music, philosophy, etc. It becomes your mental model to apply to other aspects of life.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I used to argue this. Then I watched multiple engineers under me and next to me ignore this argument in favor of focusing on distributed system design and clear communication. The results have persuaded me that I was wrong, and they were right. In the end the most effective people around me are capable of designing a system and breaking it down effectively for other engineers to build. Most of them have no idea what things like Monads and Functors are, and they’re no less effective for it.
xpe 5y ago
PG's arguments are not forcing you to pretend (or ignore) anything. I think it's possible you are falling prey to the either/or fallacy.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

But what real world evidence do we have? Mostly that languages "most people are actually making things in" are picked by the business on the basis of popularity, which is determined mostly by what people learn in university - which is determined mostly by what is currently most popular on the job market. It's a self-sustaining feedback loop that has little to do with relative utility of languages for real-world problems (at least discounting languages' library ecosystems).

ashtonkem 5y ago
This argument is self refuting. If inferior programming languages are being picked continuously by “the business”, we’d expect that businesses that pick “superior” programming languages to out compete the other businesses. We don’t see this, so one of the following is true: 1) Programming language quality is a non-factor in business success. 2) People like PG are wrong about what makes one language superior to another. By the by, I have never seen a non-programmer executive demand a “bad” language be used for a startup. What I tend to see is grizzled ex-programmers ignoring the trends and picking the reliable and “boring” choice over the complaints of some IC’s. This is less a “clueless business” issue and more an acknowledgment of an unpopular truth: picking the boring language that lets the business focus on its core domain is better than picking something that excites the most vocal engineers.
- mst 5y ago
  The claim that learning weird languages will help you learn new ways of thinking about problems that may be helpful in other langauges, and the claim that using 'boring' languages is the correct default for building production systems, in no way contradict.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Do what you will with your own time, I’m no longer convinced that learning “weird” languages is an effective way to become a better programmer. From my experience as an IC and as a manager, learning how to write better is probably a better investment for professional growth, second to that would be better distributed system design. If it pleases you, feel free to learn whatever. It’s why I know Rust and Haskell personally. But as career advice I am much more dubious, even though I once agreed with you.
    - mst 5y ago
      I find that for a lot of problems reasoning about the core problem using a mental model akin to lisp makes it easier for me to come to a sufficiently clear understanding to be able to better express the solution in both code and prose. So while I agree about writing prose, it's also true that learning lisp made me a better documenter.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Having worked professionally in lisp, I have no idea why people say this.
        mst 5y ago
        Programming is full of things where what works for one person isn't at all what works for another.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        Which is why I said “I have no idea” rather than “it doesn’t work that way”.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > If inferior programming languages are being picked continuously by “the business”, we’d expect that businesses that pick “superior” programming languages to out compete the other businesses. That assumes that the software business is efficient in the market sense, which my experience suggests is very much not true. On the contrary, I've found that success hinges primarily on the ability to find and execute good business deals (which is the work of executive team and/or sales&marketing). Software side has so much slack in it that it can (and often does) do extremely bad job at making the actual thing and still succeed. > I have never seen a non-programmer executive demand a “bad” language be used for a startup. I've worked for one many years ago. I was actually promised the free reign over technology stack for a project, until the CEO decided to override me and order me to use a very particular and shitty combination of technologies. He was very up-front with me about his reasoning: he said, "yeah, I could let you write this in something more reasonable, say Ruby or Python, but programmers for those languages are expensive, PHP programmers are much cheaper, and I'm going to be hiring more people to help you". (I run the project solo for the next year, because he eventually decided not to hire anyone.) > picking the boring language that lets the business focus on its core domain is better than picking something that excites the most vocal engineers. Be careful not to mix up topics here. What usually "excites the most vocal engineers" these days is the things they can use to pad their CVs. This usually goes against what the management wants, which is whatever stack they've read about on HBR or whatever one is cheapest to hire people for. Neither of those tend to have anything to do with powerful and advanced tooling.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > That assumes that the software business is efficient in the market sense, which my experience suggests is very much not true. On the contrary, I've found that success hinges primarily on the ability to find and execute good business deals (which is the work of executive team and/or sales&marketing). Software side has so much slack in it that it can (and often does) do extremely bad job at making the actual thing and still succeed. I actually covered this in literally the next line.
    - xpe 5y ago
kortilla 5y ago
This is bullshit because popular languages have changed and emerged from outside of university (see Go, Python, etc that had no university presence and exploded in popularity in industry).

franga2000 5y ago

You don't have to use a language to benefit from its existence. Haskell is a weird language that nobody* uses in production, but it's where a lot of functional programming concepts were refined and ultimately made their way into mainstream languages. I use functional programming tools in Java and JS very often and they only exist because many people tried Haskell, saw the potential of this new* paradigm and implemented parts of it into their environments. Similarly, having been forced to learn Prolog in university, I now have a completely different view of solving problems. And while I'll surely never touch Prolog again, this new perspective allows me to write much better code in some cases, despite working in a completely different language.

hiepph 5y ago
I second this. It's always about learning the mindset even if you don't use it for real life. Same for learning mathematics, music, philosophy, etc. It becomes your mental model to apply to other aspects of life.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I used to argue this. Then I watched multiple engineers under me and next to me ignore this argument in favor of focusing on distributed system design and clear communication. The results have persuaded me that I was wrong, and they were right. In the end the most effective people around me are capable of designing a system and breaking it down effectively for other engineers to build. Most of them have no idea what things like Monads and Functors are, and they’re no less effective for it.

xpe 5y ago

PG's arguments are not forcing you to pretend (or ignore) anything. I think it's possible you are falling prey to the either/or fallacy.