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> Do people not regularly question what language to use when starting a project? Nope. We've pretty much settled on Go for backend, js/react for frontend. Wh
by silisili 5y ago
> Do people not regularly question what language to use when starting a project?
Nope. We've pretty much settled on Go for backend, js/react for frontend.
When you have a team of people all on the same page, randomly picking languages is a nightmare. Johnny wrote service X in Rust/Zig/D before he left for FB, now go fix it. That's a lot of developer time wasted for probably zero gain. Plus we have mountains of old code examples, modules, etc you lose in switching.
In fairness, if however I were a solo dev, I probably would more often explore and evaluate new languages.
- jitix 5y agoI generally agree with you, having had to debug nasty Clojure code because somebody thought it was the best fit for the problem (it actually was) but then left the company. I think prescribing languages should be somewhere it between - settle on one RAD tool/dynamic language (Ruby/Python) for quick new projects, one performant language (Go/Java/Rust) for core services, and one UI framework (React/Angular/Vue). It is important to use the right tool for the right project, but from a selected set of options that the company has built workforce competency around. Using the latest and greatest often gives you the best technical solution but often at the cost of maintainability and predictability.