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SRE here. Blog author seems to not understand the business side of the house which is concerning. Companies pick Java or .Net because hiring developers is easy

SRE here. Blog author seems to not understand the business side of the house which is concerning. Companies pick Java or .Net because hiring developers is easy, which business side loves, and a lot of business development work is not rocket science. It's taking business logic and implementing in code. I recommend this blog article to understand the logic behind Java but it applies to other technologies in question. https://gist.githubusercontent.com/terryjbates/3fcab7b07a0c5c3a570cefa43a96cc4b/raw/a3af1d1ff009467af41c1955ccd94823e47951b9/java_shop_politics.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/terryjbates/3fcab7b07a0c5...

kjellsbells 6mo ago
That link displays as raw content, maybe [1] is kinder, and is rooted on the original author's blog. [1] https://sasamat.xen.prgmr.com/michaelochurch/wp/?p=881 https://sasamat.xen.prgmr.com/michaelochurch/wp/?p=881
- stackskipton 6mo ago
  I didn't want to link off to random site.
aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
> Companies pick Java or .Net because hiring developers is easy, which business side loves Instead of giving a counter-argument, I'll link to a parallel discussion thread concerning "hiring developers for programming language X is easy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47888298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47888298 > a lot of business development work is not rocket science. It's taking business logic and implementing in code. In my experience (and I claim that I am rather sitting at the source), it is rather that developers who implement business logic are typically actively held back or prevented from inventing smart solution for the problems that the company has - even if these (very often) would be very helpful for the company. In the area of implementation of business logic, thus the tall poppy syndrome [1] is very prevalent: you are very hinted not to think of innovative solution, but to be a good worker bee. This is why in my opinion implementation of line-of-business applications is frowned upon by many good programmers, and not because the questions that you are involved with are "boring" (they are not!). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
- stackskipton 6mo ago
  Jane Street is always a bad example since they are working on niche problems that few people experience. Sure, Tall Poppy happens because A) It's human nature and B) Companies don't want unusual poppy size, they want same size so when it's time to harvest some of them, they can just quickly cut.
  - aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
    > Jane Street is always a bad example since they are working on niche problems that few people experience. Surprisingly (?), in my experience in a lot of industries people (or more specifically: programmers who develop internal software for this industry) work on problems that are incredibly niche outside this industry, and thus incredibly few people ever experience.
  - arkestra 6mo ago
    Feh, I think the world would be a better place if more collective endeavour was organised along Jane Street's model. It's not so much the problem domain that makes JS unusual, it's rather that they're going for being a heterarchy (or something adjacent to that) rather than a hierarchy. A lot of what people think of as the bad side-effects of "human nature" are just negative side-effects of hierarchical models of organisations. For me, the interesting question is why more people don't try to ditch hierarchy in favour of heterarchy. Hierarchies suck! There are presumably real-world reasons why hierarchy tends to win out? But Jane Street are obviously doing well. Perhaps being able to calibrate by how well you're doing in the markets helps stabilise the organisational approach, and it's tricky to make heterarchy stick otherwise. Also the outside world will always have hierarchies that you need to engage with, which will create eddies of hierarchical structure. So that will tend to throw you off. But I think it's worth asking: why aren't more companies like Jane Street?
thebeardisred 6mo ago
For anyone looking for the original - https://web.archive.org/web/20120504065429/http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/java-shop-politics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120504065429/http://michaeloch... (it was easier for me to use in reader mode because it didn't obliterate spacing between words)

kjellsbells 6mo ago

That link displays as raw content, maybe [1] is kinder, and is rooted on the original author's blog. [1] https://sasamat.xen.prgmr.com/michaelochurch/wp/?p=881 https://sasamat.xen.prgmr.com/michaelochurch/wp/?p=881

stackskipton 6mo ago
I didn't want to link off to random site.

aleph_minus_one 6mo ago

> Companies pick Java or .Net because hiring developers is easy, which business side loves Instead of giving a counter-argument, I'll link to a parallel discussion thread concerning "hiring developers for programming language X is easy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47888298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47888298 > a lot of business development work is not rocket science. It's taking business logic and implementing in code. In my experience (and I claim that I am rather sitting at the source), it is rather that developers who implement business logic are typically actively held back or prevented from inventing smart solution for the problems that the company has - even if these (very often) would be very helpful for the company. In the area of implementation of business logic, thus the tall poppy syndrome [1] is very prevalent: you are very hinted not to think of innovative solution, but to be a good worker bee. This is why in my opinion implementation of line-of-business applications is frowned upon by many good programmers, and not because the questions that you are involved with are "boring" (they are not!). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

stackskipton 6mo ago
Jane Street is always a bad example since they are working on niche problems that few people experience. Sure, Tall Poppy happens because A) It's human nature and B) Companies don't want unusual poppy size, they want same size so when it's time to harvest some of them, they can just quickly cut.
- aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
  > Jane Street is always a bad example since they are working on niche problems that few people experience. Surprisingly (?), in my experience in a lot of industries people (or more specifically: programmers who develop internal software for this industry) work on problems that are incredibly niche outside this industry, and thus incredibly few people ever experience.
- arkestra 6mo ago
  Feh, I think the world would be a better place if more collective endeavour was organised along Jane Street's model. It's not so much the problem domain that makes JS unusual, it's rather that they're going for being a heterarchy (or something adjacent to that) rather than a hierarchy. A lot of what people think of as the bad side-effects of "human nature" are just negative side-effects of hierarchical models of organisations. For me, the interesting question is why more people don't try to ditch hierarchy in favour of heterarchy. Hierarchies suck! There are presumably real-world reasons why hierarchy tends to win out? But Jane Street are obviously doing well. Perhaps being able to calibrate by how well you're doing in the markets helps stabilise the organisational approach, and it's tricky to make heterarchy stick otherwise. Also the outside world will always have hierarchies that you need to engage with, which will create eddies of hierarchical structure. So that will tend to throw you off. But I think it's worth asking: why aren't more companies like Jane Street?

thebeardisred 6mo ago

For anyone looking for the original - https://web.archive.org/web/20120504065429/http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/java-shop-politics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120504065429/http://michaeloch... (it was easier for me to use in reader mode because it didn't obliterate spacing between words)