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I've noticed a growing trend of "one solution fits all" in Software Engineering, where people exhibit near-religious attachment to a language, technology, archi

I've noticed a growing trend of "one solution fits all" in Software Engineering, where people exhibit near-religious attachment to a language, technology, architectural pattern (hello microservices!) or framework and believe that it solves every problem. This is the opposite of what Software Engineering should be about. An experienced engineer will pick the best approach for the particular use case. A technology that works equally well in all use cases is not optimized for any particular application (by definition) and thus will be outperformed by a technology that IS optimized for the target needs. While there is an argument to be made for the existence of stacks that are "good enough" for most/all problems, that shouldn't empower proponents of said stack to spit on everybody else's choices - many of which being objectively better for the task at hand.

c_crank 3y ago
This attitude smells like unconscious job security to me. A world where everyone believes they should rewrite it in Rust is a world where Rust developers are in demand. A world where everyone has seen the light and accepted Haskell as their lord and savior is a world where Haskell devs can get paid to write all the CRUD apps of the world. And so on.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
It could be that. Or it could just be the noxious tribal-flavour-of-the-month thing that has been there ever since I got into this industry in the late 90s. I've seen several waves of it, and had plenty of people roll their eyes about suggested technology choices in ways that basically came down to but that isn't cool. It's in large part because the industry is top-heavy with younger people who get senior titles and decision making powers after only a handful of years of work, and they're by nature excitement and novelty seekers. I definitely went through that phase. Do I want to work in cool tech? Yes. But there's always a trade-off.

c_crank 3y ago

This attitude smells like unconscious job security to me. A world where everyone believes they should rewrite it in Rust is a world where Rust developers are in demand. A world where everyone has seen the light and accepted Haskell as their lord and savior is a world where Haskell devs can get paid to write all the CRUD apps of the world. And so on.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

It could be that. Or it could just be the noxious tribal-flavour-of-the-month thing that has been there ever since I got into this industry in the late 90s. I've seen several waves of it, and had plenty of people roll their eyes about suggested technology choices in ways that basically came down to but that isn't cool. It's in large part because the industry is top-heavy with younger people who get senior titles and decision making powers after only a handful of years of work, and they're by nature excitement and novelty seekers. I definitely went through that phase. Do I want to work in cool tech? Yes. But there's always a trade-off.