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Debatable. What's your end goal? If your primary goal is making money (through the web) and you are non-technical, easier does in fact equal better. The GP's

Debatable. What's your end goal? If your primary goal is making money (through the web) and you are non-technical, easier does in fact equal better. The GP's brother isn't going to stop what he's doing and learn Ruby so he can rewrite his whole website in gloriously succinct and elegant code. He's going to tweak his site, continue making money and stop caring about whatever the hell his site is written in.

cageface 14y ago
Life is full of tempting shortcuts. Take them at your peril.
- polyfractal 14y ago
  Well that's basically saying nothing at all. Again, from the brother's perspective, perhaps learning Ruby is the tempting shortcut ("I'll just learn this awesome language first and my website will be super easy to upgrade and modify") ... and then it takes him too long to get back to his website, which has floundered and is no longer popular or making money. Or ruby was too hard for him so he went back to tweaking his site with PHP. Or <whatever> My point is that it is all about perspective, something that a lot of HN misses. Not everyone cares about technology. Most people just care about getting the job done and making money, using whatever tool is easiest for them to personally use, at the time they need to use it. So to that guy, it isn't a tempting shortcut: it's the best route to prosperity.
  - dpritchett 14y ago
    Simple versus easy [1]. Getting started with minimal friction is a great virtue for the beginning of a project's life, particularly when it allows amateurs to produce something of value. Software development professionals with stronger requirements (reliability, maintainability, ease of code reading) are not always going to reach for the easiest tool. There's a reason most of the software on your machine isn't written in Visual Basic. The people who prefer PHP are right. The people who avoid PHP are also right. They are solving fundamentally different problems. [1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
- kalmsy 14y ago
  I'll still get there before you.
gizzlon 14y ago
I get your point, and it's important to get s¤% done. But you have to at least consider that what's easy right now might not be the easiest in the long run. Maybe a little OT, but I can't shake the feeling that he's going to introduce some nasty security bugs if he's hacking on php code without knowing what he's doing. Might not matter, but then again someone could find it and completely ruin his small business. (of course you can write "secure" code in php, but you need some knowledge to do so..)

cageface 14y ago

Life is full of tempting shortcuts. Take them at your peril.

polyfractal 14y ago
Well that's basically saying nothing at all. Again, from the brother's perspective, perhaps learning Ruby is the tempting shortcut ("I'll just learn this awesome language first and my website will be super easy to upgrade and modify") ... and then it takes him too long to get back to his website, which has floundered and is no longer popular or making money. Or ruby was too hard for him so he went back to tweaking his site with PHP. Or <whatever> My point is that it is all about perspective, something that a lot of HN misses. Not everyone cares about technology. Most people just care about getting the job done and making money, using whatever tool is easiest for them to personally use, at the time they need to use it. So to that guy, it isn't a tempting shortcut: it's the best route to prosperity.
- dpritchett 14y ago
  Simple versus easy [1]. Getting started with minimal friction is a great virtue for the beginning of a project's life, particularly when it allows amateurs to produce something of value. Software development professionals with stronger requirements (reliability, maintainability, ease of code reading) are not always going to reach for the easiest tool. There's a reason most of the software on your machine isn't written in Visual Basic. The people who prefer PHP are right. The people who avoid PHP are also right. They are solving fundamentally different problems. [1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
kalmsy 14y ago
I'll still get there before you.

gizzlon 14y ago

I get your point, and it's important to get s¤% done. But you have to at least consider that what's easy right now might not be the easiest in the long run. Maybe a little OT, but I can't shake the feeling that he's going to introduce some nasty security bugs if he's hacking on php code without knowing what he's doing. Might not matter, but then again someone could find it and completely ruin his small business. (of course you can write "secure" code in php, but you need some knowledge to do so..)