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How often do you start a new project? At work, me and my team maintain two existing products, both written (primarily) in Go. It would be bonkers for us to--on

How often do you start a new project? At work, me and my team maintain two existing products, both written (primarily) in Go. It would be bonkers for us to--once a year--consider "what if we threw out all of the existing code and re-implemented it in something else." And if we did launch a new product, because it'd probably be targeting a particular ecosystem, it'd probably be silly for us to choose a language that doesn't have good well-maintained libraries for that ecosystem. I guess you could say that's evaluating Go against other languages; but we know the ecosystem, we know that if we wanted to go with anything but Go we'd be wandering in to the wilderness.

capableweb 4y ago
Yeah, obviously doesn't fit if you have two services running without any new services being written. But as a freelancer/consultant/cross-team employee in bigger organizations, new projects/services do get created probably more frequent than "once-per-year" but less frequent than "once-per-month". Everyone's experience is different I presume.
- cube2222 4y ago
  If it's the same team developing and maintaining all those services, and those services are creating a bigger whole together, then using a single language for all of them will be very beneficial in the long run. Doesn't really matter which language it is. You can easily reuse libraries, observability tooling, don't have to context switch so often, etc. It's not "Which language is best for this project in a vacuum where nothing else exists?". It's "Is this language really so much better suited for this project that it's worth all the additional cost and mental overhead it will introduce?". Not saying it's never the right choice, but it often isn't.
- LukeShu 4y ago
  The majority of programmers are not freelancers/consultants/cross-team-employees, they're for the most part "stuck" on just 1 team except for switching jobs. And so sure, while a new project gets started somewhere in the org more frequently than "once-per-year", for most programmers it's not their team. And so their answer is "no". And so that "42%" doesn't seem high to me. If the question had been "did a freelancer/consultant/cross-team-employee involved with your team evaluate Go against another language for a project as part of their involvement with a team other than your own?" then the answer would probably be "yes" for most programmers (well, more likely "not sure, but probably yes"). If the question had been asked only to freelancers/consultants/cross-team-employees, then "42%" would seem high.
- cactus2093 4y ago
  I shudder to think at the wake of destruction left behind by all these freelancers that come in, implement a brand new service in their own language of choice without much regard to the tooling and ecosystem that the rest of the company is invested in, and then bounce, leaving everyone else to figure out how to support it in the future. As an EM that strikes me as a very bad model to engage with contractors on, I'm surprised that it's such a common gig for you. But hey, more power to you, it must be fun getting to do a lot greenfield projects without the long-term responsibility.

capableweb 4y ago

Yeah, obviously doesn't fit if you have two services running without any new services being written. But as a freelancer/consultant/cross-team employee in bigger organizations, new projects/services do get created probably more frequent than "once-per-year" but less frequent than "once-per-month". Everyone's experience is different I presume.

cube2222 4y ago
If it's the same team developing and maintaining all those services, and those services are creating a bigger whole together, then using a single language for all of them will be very beneficial in the long run. Doesn't really matter which language it is. You can easily reuse libraries, observability tooling, don't have to context switch so often, etc. It's not "Which language is best for this project in a vacuum where nothing else exists?". It's "Is this language really so much better suited for this project that it's worth all the additional cost and mental overhead it will introduce?". Not saying it's never the right choice, but it often isn't.
LukeShu 4y ago
The majority of programmers are not freelancers/consultants/cross-team-employees, they're for the most part "stuck" on just 1 team except for switching jobs. And so sure, while a new project gets started somewhere in the org more frequently than "once-per-year", for most programmers it's not their team. And so their answer is "no". And so that "42%" doesn't seem high to me. If the question had been "did a freelancer/consultant/cross-team-employee involved with your team evaluate Go against another language for a project as part of their involvement with a team other than your own?" then the answer would probably be "yes" for most programmers (well, more likely "not sure, but probably yes"). If the question had been asked only to freelancers/consultants/cross-team-employees, then "42%" would seem high.
cactus2093 4y ago
I shudder to think at the wake of destruction left behind by all these freelancers that come in, implement a brand new service in their own language of choice without much regard to the tooling and ecosystem that the rest of the company is invested in, and then bounce, leaving everyone else to figure out how to support it in the future. As an EM that strikes me as a very bad model to engage with contractors on, I'm surprised that it's such a common gig for you. But hey, more power to you, it must be fun getting to do a lot greenfield projects without the long-term responsibility.