4 ms·

I think the takeaway here is that any language or ecosystem has an unspoken culture, set of habits and norms, set of assumed background knowledge, and general "

I think the takeaway here is that any language or ecosystem has an unspoken culture, set of habits and norms, set of assumed background knowledge, and general "look and feel" to it that matter to the productivity and overall satisfaction that any given developer will get, based on their personality and past experience. We often ignore these aspects when doing something like picking a language, but they really do make a difference.

tomatowurst 5y ago
i think the biggest point is that it's hard to find developers in a special niche even if it allegedly offers productivity gains, this is negated by increased costs. clojure was cool, I used it mainly for datomic, but the gains really dont justify relying on public slack channels and mailing lists to hire and find devs. I really see this from an economic point of view. I could be mistaken based on my own experience dealing with clojure and datomic in particular. I'm just not sure the gain is there anymore as other databases built on conventional tech stacks increasingly more or less take away the gains.
- roguecoder 5y ago
  Your comment reminds me of this 36 year old paper: http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf It describes how no technical improvement alone can get an order of magnitude improvement in software development efficiency, so the ways available to increase development by an order of magnitude are learning to use already-built components, shrinking feedback loops so we can be sure we are building the right thing, and growing the profession.
  - tomatowurst 5y ago
    ah interesting that this axiom is that old and it certainly rings true. boring stacks are still in heavy demand.
roguecoder 5y ago
I appreciate that this article acknowledged that subjectivity, especially in the LISP world where positivism is common.

tomatowurst 5y ago

i think the biggest point is that it's hard to find developers in a special niche even if it allegedly offers productivity gains, this is negated by increased costs. clojure was cool, I used it mainly for datomic, but the gains really dont justify relying on public slack channels and mailing lists to hire and find devs. I really see this from an economic point of view. I could be mistaken based on my own experience dealing with clojure and datomic in particular. I'm just not sure the gain is there anymore as other databases built on conventional tech stacks increasingly more or less take away the gains.

roguecoder 5y ago
Your comment reminds me of this 36 year old paper: http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf It describes how no technical improvement alone can get an order of magnitude improvement in software development efficiency, so the ways available to increase development by an order of magnitude are learning to use already-built components, shrinking feedback loops so we can be sure we are building the right thing, and growing the profession.
- tomatowurst 5y ago
  ah interesting that this axiom is that old and it certainly rings true. boring stacks are still in heavy demand.

roguecoder 5y ago

I appreciate that this article acknowledged that subjectivity, especially in the LISP world where positivism is common.