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This argument is self refuting. If inferior programming languages are being picked continuously by “the business”, we’d expect that businesses that pick “superi

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

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