4 ms·

Unless your startup model revolves around releasing tooling in this space, why would you focus so much on tech this early on instead of just shipping stuff fast

Unless your startup model revolves around releasing tooling in this space, why would you focus so much on tech this early on instead of just shipping stuff fast? I've seen founders nerding out on the tooling and picking exotic languages like D for things that could be done in PHP or Rails in 1/5th of the time and I can understand that for hobby projects, but I'd never bet my company on that.

littlestymaar 3y ago
See above: the thing we're building require this It's not like you can easily replace Rust with something like PHP or rails in most context, the alternative would be C++ and there's definitely some productivity and stability benefit in using Rust, which can dramatically speed your execution (especially if you don't have a rock star C++ team in the first place).
berkes 3y ago
It's an often repeated idea that somehow Rails or PHP allow to ship faster than rust (or go, or java?) For one, it's simply not true in many cases: I know Rails (and Sinatra) very well and axum or actix slightly less so, but the time from idea to running server is hardly different in both. In this phase, that's measured in hours or days anyway. Secondly, the primary thing that speeds up "getting your startup to production" is using known tech. Stuff you are extremely familiar with, is boring, and well supported on hosting and deployment. If you write rust day in day out, getting rbenv,bundler, the right gems,ide support, CI, linting, and whatnot set up will slow you down a lot when you are new to Ruby and Rails. Same for any language. I'm slow in PHP or Python because I keep hitting speed bumps that require experience, detailed knowledge of the stack, or best practices to figure out. I now understand the borrow- and typechecker, in rust. The thing most people say is slowing them down. It was slowing me down, when I was new to it. The same way my inexperience with pipenv, or phpstan or webpack is slowing me down on python, PHP or JavaScript. And lastly, the strictness of rust, as with Java and C# (and TS) is also very quickly turned around into a time saver. Refactoring, understanding and maintenance is just so much easier and faster with static typing and checkers. And, I've found, especially in the first phase of rushing, pivoting, adapting and rapid change, a crucial timesaver. Which is after days, already.
- karolist 3y ago
  I was referring to the benefits using a well established framework/platform gives you as opposed to implementing new features. The boring parts of web are long solved in boring frameworks, but not new ones, where you mess around trying to come up with a good project structure, form handling, auth, background workers and all that. Performance critical paths can be written in performant languages, no need to do the CRUD part with fancy tech imho.
  - berkes 3y ago
    I know. And I was referring to the benefits of using a framework or platform that you know well. Which is rather different, but will often overlap. The boring parts may be solved in boring frameworks, but if you don't know to find them, don't know their ins- and outs, don't know how to leverage it (or avoid parts) and so on, it just slows down. Learning a language is so much more than learning a new syntax - that's the trivial part. It's about learning where to find up-to-date information, what libs are good today, which ones no longer preferred but still highly popular for legacy reasons. Which boring stuff saves time and which will come and byte you. What "sharp knives" or "footguns" there are lying around. And what might speed you up today, but cripple you tomorrow.

littlestymaar 3y ago

See above: the thing we're building require this It's not like you can easily replace Rust with something like PHP or rails in most context, the alternative would be C++ and there's definitely some productivity and stability benefit in using Rust, which can dramatically speed your execution (especially if you don't have a rock star C++ team in the first place).

berkes 3y ago

It's an often repeated idea that somehow Rails or PHP allow to ship faster than rust (or go, or java?) For one, it's simply not true in many cases: I know Rails (and Sinatra) very well and axum or actix slightly less so, but the time from idea to running server is hardly different in both. In this phase, that's measured in hours or days anyway. Secondly, the primary thing that speeds up "getting your startup to production" is using known tech. Stuff you are extremely familiar with, is boring, and well supported on hosting and deployment. If you write rust day in day out, getting rbenv,bundler, the right gems,ide support, CI, linting, and whatnot set up will slow you down a lot when you are new to Ruby and Rails. Same for any language. I'm slow in PHP or Python because I keep hitting speed bumps that require experience, detailed knowledge of the stack, or best practices to figure out. I now understand the borrow- and typechecker, in rust. The thing most people say is slowing them down. It was slowing me down, when I was new to it. The same way my inexperience with pipenv, or phpstan or webpack is slowing me down on python, PHP or JavaScript. And lastly, the strictness of rust, as with Java and C# (and TS) is also very quickly turned around into a time saver. Refactoring, understanding and maintenance is just so much easier and faster with static typing and checkers. And, I've found, especially in the first phase of rushing, pivoting, adapting and rapid change, a crucial timesaver. Which is after days, already.

karolist 3y ago
I was referring to the benefits using a well established framework/platform gives you as opposed to implementing new features. The boring parts of web are long solved in boring frameworks, but not new ones, where you mess around trying to come up with a good project structure, form handling, auth, background workers and all that. Performance critical paths can be written in performant languages, no need to do the CRUD part with fancy tech imho.
- berkes 3y ago
  I know. And I was referring to the benefits of using a framework or platform that you know well. Which is rather different, but will often overlap. The boring parts may be solved in boring frameworks, but if you don't know to find them, don't know their ins- and outs, don't know how to leverage it (or avoid parts) and so on, it just slows down. Learning a language is so much more than learning a new syntax - that's the trivial part. It's about learning where to find up-to-date information, what libs are good today, which ones no longer preferred but still highly popular for legacy reasons. Which boring stuff saves time and which will come and byte you. What "sharp knives" or "footguns" there are lying around. And what might speed you up today, but cripple you tomorrow.