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> The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake Hard to take you seriously when you do such weird generalized takes.

> The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake Hard to take you seriously when you do such weird generalized takes. While it's a sad fact that fanboys and zealots absolutely do exist, most devs can't afford to be such and have to be pragmatic. They pick languages based on merit and analysis.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
Most of the people who use Go and Rust do it for pragmatic reasons. That doesn't influence the culture of the zealots in each community. You should search for headlines on HN that say "written in Go" or "written in Rust" and then compare that to the number of headlines that say "written in JavaScript" or "written in Kotlin."
- nativeit 2y ago
  I understand the criticism that languages should be pragmatic choices they serve the strengths of the project at hand, but I guess I always found most projects boasting they’re written in a specific language or framework are doing so precisely because of the overarching interest in the language itself, which seems like a perfectly valid justification for such projects to me. I’ve seen the more cynical hype-driven stuff, but it’s inevitably superficial on first glance, where I have seen some real curiosity and exploration in many “Project X - Built In Rust/Go/Cobol/D/Whatever” and I think they’re exploring the dynamics of the language and tooling as much as anything else.
- whstl 2y ago
  This is not a sign or a proof of zealotry.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Those headlines help me understand what I am getting so I seriously have no idea what argument you are trying to make. You do seem to say Golang and/or Rust devs are zealots which, if it is indeed what you are saying, is boring and plain false.
hibikir 2y ago
You are very fortunate: In my 20 year career, I've spent most of it surrounded by zealots, including at very well known firms. I am currently surrounded by multiple teams with extremely tight ideas of what languages they want to work in. All different ideas, yet they are working basically with the same constraints: it's not as if they ware doing very different work where another team's language would be unfit for purpose. The performance is similar, and they are basically in a culture war. They have passionate arguments listing why a different team's choice is all wrong: None hold any real water. I am especially valuable because I am fine reading and writing any of the languages involved. The management likes that, but there's a lot of difficulties solving the tribal problem, as the leads are basically all crazy zealots, and it's not as if purging one or two factions of zealots would avoid further zealotry from the survivors. The fact that I can work across all their tech doesn't make me many friends, as my work across systems shows their arguments have little merit. For most work, in most cases, most languages are just fine. The completely wrong tool for the job is pretty rare, and the winning argument in most places is "we have the most people that have experience with tool X, or really want to try exciting new thing Y", for whatever the problem is, and whatever X might be.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  What's preventing you from working in a less dysfunctional place, exactly?

pclmulqdq 2y ago

Most of the people who use Go and Rust do it for pragmatic reasons. That doesn't influence the culture of the zealots in each community. You should search for headlines on HN that say "written in Go" or "written in Rust" and then compare that to the number of headlines that say "written in JavaScript" or "written in Kotlin."

nativeit 2y ago
I understand the criticism that languages should be pragmatic choices they serve the strengths of the project at hand, but I guess I always found most projects boasting they’re written in a specific language or framework are doing so precisely because of the overarching interest in the language itself, which seems like a perfectly valid justification for such projects to me. I’ve seen the more cynical hype-driven stuff, but it’s inevitably superficial on first glance, where I have seen some real curiosity and exploration in many “Project X - Built In Rust/Go/Cobol/D/Whatever” and I think they’re exploring the dynamics of the language and tooling as much as anything else.
whstl 2y ago
This is not a sign or a proof of zealotry.
pdimitar 2y ago
Those headlines help me understand what I am getting so I seriously have no idea what argument you are trying to make. You do seem to say Golang and/or Rust devs are zealots which, if it is indeed what you are saying, is boring and plain false.

hibikir 2y ago

You are very fortunate: In my 20 year career, I've spent most of it surrounded by zealots, including at very well known firms. I am currently surrounded by multiple teams with extremely tight ideas of what languages they want to work in. All different ideas, yet they are working basically with the same constraints: it's not as if they ware doing very different work where another team's language would be unfit for purpose. The performance is similar, and they are basically in a culture war. They have passionate arguments listing why a different team's choice is all wrong: None hold any real water. I am especially valuable because I am fine reading and writing any of the languages involved. The management likes that, but there's a lot of difficulties solving the tribal problem, as the leads are basically all crazy zealots, and it's not as if purging one or two factions of zealots would avoid further zealotry from the survivors. The fact that I can work across all their tech doesn't make me many friends, as my work across systems shows their arguments have little merit. For most work, in most cases, most languages are just fine. The completely wrong tool for the job is pretty rare, and the winning argument in most places is "we have the most people that have experience with tool X, or really want to try exciting new thing Y", for whatever the problem is, and whatever X might be.

pdimitar 2y ago
What's preventing you from working in a less dysfunctional place, exactly?