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Rant: could we please stop referring to a collection of <X> as an ecosystem? Node has a collection or environment of tools, frameworks and libraries to support

Rant: could we please stop referring to a collection of <X> as an ecosystem? Node has a collection or environment of tools, frameworks and libraries to support it. An ecosystem is something living, a biological system, typically with a set of symbiotic properties within it. The trend is the same in business. Stripe no longer has business partners; they have an “ecosystem.” The same with banks that provide wholesale banking services through a set of retail businesses - they are no longer wholesale banks but “ecosystem players”. This kind of jargon really dilutes the meaning of words and makes it hard to understand what is really meant. Rant over, sorry. Apart from my rant, it’s funny to see Node and JavaScript doing what almost killed Perl 20 years ago. There are so many ways of doing things, so many bespoke frameworks and packages (doing OO in Perl, anyone?), so many odd dialects that it fragmented the language and people got frustrated. The same is happening to JS right now, although with some important differences. There is hardly a fragmentation of usage via formal “dialects” in JS; rather, the problem is in the sprawl of libraries and “infrastructure” services, many of which are solved problems (e.g. Gulp reinventing what Make is really good at; Yarn reinventing what npm is supposed to do, etc). The supposed “ecosystem” is fragmenting day by day from its inherent complexity, and it’s exactly what caused web developers to flee from Perl to more simple, consistent alternatives.

stevage 4y ago
It's a perfectly apt metaphor which is clear and useful. Your rant seems unfounded.
lozenge 4y ago
An ecosystem isn't alive, it's a collection of independent species that have an emergent behaviour.
- lioeters 4y ago
  By that line of thought, is life alive? It's just a collection of interdependent cells and molecules with emergent behavior. Seems like an ecosystem is alive collectively, in the same way that an individual is alive, just on a different scale of organization.
thiht 4y ago
I’m doing Perl for a living and I don’t see it. Perl died because it sucks as a programming language. It’s good as a scripting language but that’s it. Perl was created before some widespread modern concepts existed so the terminology and implementation is all wrong. Also tons of Perl libraries go way too far and implement new keywords (well not really but it’s just like it) and modify the structure of the language. Error handling sucks, debugging sucks, tooling sucks, Cpan sucks both as a tool and as a repo library, even logging with Caro sucks, wtf kind of level is « croak » or « confess »? Also each minor version of Perl breaks everything, with JSON::encode we have issues with scalars not properly encoded as numbers between 2 versions. Perl is a dumpster fire for real programming, that’s why it died. I also do Typescript for a living, and on the contrary, the ecosystem (yes) keeps improving. I use Parcel 2 on my projects and it’s amazing. I’ll try Vite someday but it’s not a priority because Parcel works. For your other examples, well yarn is less relevant today but it helped drastically improve npm. As for Make, do you really think it’s a perfect solution? I use it but it’s syntax is opaque, it doesn’t support env files easily, it’s not even really cross platform because of GNU make/BSD make. It’s dishonest to think there’s no reason to reinvent Make
solardev 4y ago
An ecosystem is exactly what it is though, a rich and messy landscape of individuals and groups competing for habitat and resources with finite inputs. Like a biological system, there's a lot of similar forms with subtle differences trying to find or invent a niche, with many constantly evolving or going extinct. I mean literally you have individual organisms (programmers and projects or companies) competing for fitness, with a finite input of dollars and time, striving to reproduce and gain widespread dominance. If that's not a ecosystem, I don't know what is. Perl was the first language I seriously learned. It wasn't really an ecosystem. More like moss slowing growing on an old tree. It was so niche as to be endemic. In contrast, Javascript is a bustling ecosystem. It has a genome that is constantly evolving, extremely rapidly, not unlike how pop and rock music have evolved through the decades. It's very much a living, breathing system, and a fascinating case study of group dynamics and organisms trying to optimize for some local maximum while still being a part of a bigger system in the abstract. Organic life is beautiful and messy because there was no predefined "best answer" and it's all just information vs information, algorithms and processors trying to find their place in a vast, cold world, scavenging what little energy the sun happens to shine their way. Javascript really isn't so different. It's utterly chaotic BECAUSE it's alive.

stevage 4y ago

It's a perfectly apt metaphor which is clear and useful. Your rant seems unfounded.

lozenge 4y ago

An ecosystem isn't alive, it's a collection of independent species that have an emergent behaviour.

lioeters 4y ago
By that line of thought, is life alive? It's just a collection of interdependent cells and molecules with emergent behavior. Seems like an ecosystem is alive collectively, in the same way that an individual is alive, just on a different scale of organization.

thiht 4y ago

I’m doing Perl for a living and I don’t see it. Perl died because it sucks as a programming language. It’s good as a scripting language but that’s it. Perl was created before some widespread modern concepts existed so the terminology and implementation is all wrong. Also tons of Perl libraries go way too far and implement new keywords (well not really but it’s just like it) and modify the structure of the language. Error handling sucks, debugging sucks, tooling sucks, Cpan sucks both as a tool and as a repo library, even logging with Caro sucks, wtf kind of level is « croak » or « confess »? Also each minor version of Perl breaks everything, with JSON::encode we have issues with scalars not properly encoded as numbers between 2 versions. Perl is a dumpster fire for real programming, that’s why it died. I also do Typescript for a living, and on the contrary, the ecosystem (yes) keeps improving. I use Parcel 2 on my projects and it’s amazing. I’ll try Vite someday but it’s not a priority because Parcel works. For your other examples, well yarn is less relevant today but it helped drastically improve npm. As for Make, do you really think it’s a perfect solution? I use it but it’s syntax is opaque, it doesn’t support env files easily, it’s not even really cross platform because of GNU make/BSD make. It’s dishonest to think there’s no reason to reinvent Make

solardev 4y ago

An ecosystem is exactly what it is though, a rich and messy landscape of individuals and groups competing for habitat and resources with finite inputs. Like a biological system, there's a lot of similar forms with subtle differences trying to find or invent a niche, with many constantly evolving or going extinct. I mean literally you have individual organisms (programmers and projects or companies) competing for fitness, with a finite input of dollars and time, striving to reproduce and gain widespread dominance. If that's not a ecosystem, I don't know what is. Perl was the first language I seriously learned. It wasn't really an ecosystem. More like moss slowing growing on an old tree. It was so niche as to be endemic. In contrast, Javascript is a bustling ecosystem. It has a genome that is constantly evolving, extremely rapidly, not unlike how pop and rock music have evolved through the decades. It's very much a living, breathing system, and a fascinating case study of group dynamics and organisms trying to optimize for some local maximum while still being a part of a bigger system in the abstract. Organic life is beautiful and messy because there was no predefined "best answer" and it's all just information vs information, algorithms and processors trying to find their place in a vast, cold world, scavenging what little energy the sun happens to shine their way. Javascript really isn't so different. It's utterly chaotic BECAUSE it's alive.