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Where does Joel Spolsky pick on boring languages? I went looking for this and could only find him defending the use of Java/.NET https://www.joelonsoftware.com/

Where does Joel Spolsky pick on boring languages? I went looking for this and could only find him defending the use of Java/.NET https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/01/language-wars/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/01/language-wars/. Of course that's an old article. (Incidentally the first result of my search was this very article.)

bdcravens 5y ago
in 2006 .NET was only 4 years old, quite young as far as languages/frameworks go
dnautics 5y ago
He missed the mark too, throwing shade on RoR; today almost everyone on this site depends on a mission critical RoR app (GitHub) that has scaled just fine (I'm aware parts of GitHub are no longer ruby)
- bdcravens 5y ago
  It wasn't terribly inaccurate. "for Serious Business Stuff you really must recognize that there just isn’t a lot of experience in the world building big mission critical web systems in Ruby on Rails" - in 2006 was true "I’m really not sure that you won’t hit scaling problems" - Twitter's issues scaling Rails are well known "that’s not a safe choice for at least another year or six" - For many that was true. For example, prior to Bundler (released in 2010), managing dependencies was hairy. "you’ll be buying 5 times as many boxes as the .NET guy down the hall" - Easy to throw resources at a problem now, but pre-cloud, that required some serious capex, so it wasn't a problem you take lightly. DHH himself has acknowledged Rails needs more resources, as they aren't optimizing for that problem: "Don’t get me wrong, though. I love speed. I especially love free and cheap speed. It’s just that I’m not willing to trade things that are of real, enduring value to get more of a nice-to-have once we’ve long since reached Good Enough. Things like programmer happiness, the eloquence of Ruby, and the productivity of Rails." (https://m.signalvnoise.com/ruby-has-been-fast-enough-for-13-years/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/ruby-has-been-fast-enough-for-13-...) (FWIW, I'm 100% Team Rails these days, but I do think Spolsky's assessment at the time was valid)
  - noir_lord 5y ago
    Shopify as well that said when you are big enough to care you likely are big enough to have the resources to fix it. Much like Facebook did with PHP at scale (Hack). I liked Hack, never used it but it drove a huge amount of change in the PHP ecosystem, 7 was a huge step forward and so was 8 in part because of Facebook.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      In general, that team that writes OCaml compilers at Facebook (Hack, Pyre, Flow probably a bunch of stuff I missed) are doing the Lord's work.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    No but it wasn't valid. It was a prediction. That was wrong. It had real counterexamples. You can't cite Twitter as a counter-counter example, because it's definitely not a "boring" problem domain (or, wasn't, in 2006). If you're going to give a wrong prediction like that a pass, then what the heck is the point of the scientific method?
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      There were no large apps in Rails at the time Spolsky wrote this. Features that future big apps would use hadn't been written yet. Scientific method requires a theory and the ability to prove/disprove using measurable data.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        Yeah the theory is that if it's not boring you shouldn't use it. It was disproven. There's probably a better heuristic model out there that takes into account developer ergonomics, time to mvp, etc. And no, theories do not need measurable data. Qualitative results can be used to support theories (much of my hard science grad school work was basically a binary "can this happen"? That is not really a measurement in a meaningful sense unless you consider all observations measurements -- I do not).
- civilized 5y ago
  Well, technically, the Git part of GitHub is written in C.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Yep, but not many are setting up standalone git servers and most people are wholly dependent on the web UI for some nontrivial organizational or personal git management. Either that, or they're using gitlab. Which is also RoR (iirc)
    - swiley 5y ago
      There’s nothing to set up if you don’t need a GUI and are already running httpd/sshd.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        Yep. And people generally don't do it. Because they want things the gui. Is this even a serious argument?
codesections 5y ago
> Where does Joel Spolsky pick on boring languages? I wonder if TFA is thinking about some of the harsh words Spolsky had for Java (e.g., [0]). That's not a criticism of boring languages in general, but is pretty negative on one boring language. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java...
- dsizzle 5y ago
  Yeah maybe. Although that's more focused on _students_ of Java and ends up being a roundabout/backhanded _compliment_ to Java: "the language is so ergonomic I can't tell if basic students of it are smart"?

bdcravens 5y ago

in 2006 .NET was only 4 years old, quite young as far as languages/frameworks go

dnautics 5y ago

He missed the mark too, throwing shade on RoR; today almost everyone on this site depends on a mission critical RoR app (GitHub) that has scaled just fine (I'm aware parts of GitHub are no longer ruby)

bdcravens 5y ago
It wasn't terribly inaccurate. "for Serious Business Stuff you really must recognize that there just isn’t a lot of experience in the world building big mission critical web systems in Ruby on Rails" - in 2006 was true "I’m really not sure that you won’t hit scaling problems" - Twitter's issues scaling Rails are well known "that’s not a safe choice for at least another year or six" - For many that was true. For example, prior to Bundler (released in 2010), managing dependencies was hairy. "you’ll be buying 5 times as many boxes as the .NET guy down the hall" - Easy to throw resources at a problem now, but pre-cloud, that required some serious capex, so it wasn't a problem you take lightly. DHH himself has acknowledged Rails needs more resources, as they aren't optimizing for that problem: "Don’t get me wrong, though. I love speed. I especially love free and cheap speed. It’s just that I’m not willing to trade things that are of real, enduring value to get more of a nice-to-have once we’ve long since reached Good Enough. Things like programmer happiness, the eloquence of Ruby, and the productivity of Rails." (https://m.signalvnoise.com/ruby-has-been-fast-enough-for-13-years/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/ruby-has-been-fast-enough-for-13-...) (FWIW, I'm 100% Team Rails these days, but I do think Spolsky's assessment at the time was valid)
- noir_lord 5y ago
  Shopify as well that said when you are big enough to care you likely are big enough to have the resources to fix it. Much like Facebook did with PHP at scale (Hack). I liked Hack, never used it but it drove a huge amount of change in the PHP ecosystem, 7 was a huge step forward and so was 8 in part because of Facebook.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    In general, that team that writes OCaml compilers at Facebook (Hack, Pyre, Flow probably a bunch of stuff I missed) are doing the Lord's work.
- dnautics 5y ago
  No but it wasn't valid. It was a prediction. That was wrong. It had real counterexamples. You can't cite Twitter as a counter-counter example, because it's definitely not a "boring" problem domain (or, wasn't, in 2006). If you're going to give a wrong prediction like that a pass, then what the heck is the point of the scientific method?
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    There were no large apps in Rails at the time Spolsky wrote this. Features that future big apps would use hadn't been written yet. Scientific method requires a theory and the ability to prove/disprove using measurable data.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Yeah the theory is that if it's not boring you shouldn't use it. It was disproven. There's probably a better heuristic model out there that takes into account developer ergonomics, time to mvp, etc. And no, theories do not need measurable data. Qualitative results can be used to support theories (much of my hard science grad school work was basically a binary "can this happen"? That is not really a measurement in a meaningful sense unless you consider all observations measurements -- I do not).
civilized 5y ago
Well, technically, the Git part of GitHub is written in C.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Yep, but not many are setting up standalone git servers and most people are wholly dependent on the web UI for some nontrivial organizational or personal git management. Either that, or they're using gitlab. Which is also RoR (iirc)
  - swiley 5y ago
    There’s nothing to set up if you don’t need a GUI and are already running httpd/sshd.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Yep. And people generally don't do it. Because they want things the gui. Is this even a serious argument?

codesections 5y ago

> Where does Joel Spolsky pick on boring languages? I wonder if TFA is thinking about some of the harsh words Spolsky had for Java (e.g., [0]). That's not a criticism of boring languages in general, but is pretty negative on one boring language. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java...

dsizzle 5y ago
Yeah maybe. Although that's more focused on _students_ of Java and ends up being a roundabout/backhanded _compliment_ to Java: "the language is so ergonomic I can't tell if basic students of it are smart"?