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I think with all languages you can achieve more or less the same things. There are some languages that match better your way of thinking than others...it's just

I think with all languages you can achieve more or less the same things. There are some languages that match better your way of thinking than others...it's just that. Every language can be fast enough, clean enough and have enough tooling to achieve your goal. ps: I realised at some point that "java all the way", "haskell all the way", "php all the way" is definitely not the way :P

ownagefool 11y ago
I read a post on here the other day that suggested good senior developers care about languages. I beg to differ and actually agreee with this quote more and largely believe that the languages are unimportant. It is more nuanced than that though and really depends on what you're working on. If you're writing an app that's going to be able to run on a single small vm, you might as well write everything in the language your developer is most comfortable in and will deliver fastest with. If you have ten developers but 50,000 servers, you might want to pick a faster language, but the math is pretty simple, hosting costs vs development costs, what's greater? Of course it's more complicated than that, because your ops guy can make a meal of the scaling, your java developer can write slow code, and your PHP developer can write efficient code (within the constraints of the language, of course). For me the general problems with hiring based on tech is if you go for the new and shiney, you'll deal with people who'll never finish anything, and if you go with old and reliable, you'll get people who are slower because they aren't following resonable practices. Most companies just need someone who'll deliver though, so there's nothing wrong with them picking old reliable $foo for everything, and I'd suggest your good senior developer shouldn't care about anything else than delivering, both long term and short, and if the advice is that everything needs to be rewritting in flavour of the month, I'd suggest said developer may be good, but they're probably not mature enough to be senior.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Here's the problem of a serious expectations mismatch in the industry. On the one hand, companies want someone who'll deliver, and they'll pick technology based on how cheap programmers you can find (reminds me of my ex-boss's answer to the question why won't they upgrade the tech stack - "well, we could go with something else, for example Ruby, but non-PHP programmers are too expensive"). Or they'll pick whatever platform upper-level management already decided to buy. On the other hand, a lot - if not most - developers learned the profession out of joy of programming (the recent trend of learning programming because of a career choice is a domain of the new generation). Learning something new, or using tools that are efficient and convenient, is an important part of the development process, because without enjoyment, developers burn out. Companies want to treat programmers as replaceable cogs. Developers think of themselves as artisans.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>I realised at some point that "java all the way", "haskell all the way", "php all the way" is definitely not the way Technically it's all machine code all the way anyway. :)

ownagefool 11y ago

I read a post on here the other day that suggested good senior developers care about languages. I beg to differ and actually agreee with this quote more and largely believe that the languages are unimportant. It is more nuanced than that though and really depends on what you're working on. If you're writing an app that's going to be able to run on a single small vm, you might as well write everything in the language your developer is most comfortable in and will deliver fastest with. If you have ten developers but 50,000 servers, you might want to pick a faster language, but the math is pretty simple, hosting costs vs development costs, what's greater? Of course it's more complicated than that, because your ops guy can make a meal of the scaling, your java developer can write slow code, and your PHP developer can write efficient code (within the constraints of the language, of course). For me the general problems with hiring based on tech is if you go for the new and shiney, you'll deal with people who'll never finish anything, and if you go with old and reliable, you'll get people who are slower because they aren't following resonable practices. Most companies just need someone who'll deliver though, so there's nothing wrong with them picking old reliable $foo for everything, and I'd suggest your good senior developer shouldn't care about anything else than delivering, both long term and short, and if the advice is that everything needs to be rewritting in flavour of the month, I'd suggest said developer may be good, but they're probably not mature enough to be senior.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Here's the problem of a serious expectations mismatch in the industry. On the one hand, companies want someone who'll deliver, and they'll pick technology based on how cheap programmers you can find (reminds me of my ex-boss's answer to the question why won't they upgrade the tech stack - "well, we could go with something else, for example Ruby, but non-PHP programmers are too expensive"). Or they'll pick whatever platform upper-level management already decided to buy. On the other hand, a lot - if not most - developers learned the profession out of joy of programming (the recent trend of learning programming because of a career choice is a domain of the new generation). Learning something new, or using tools that are efficient and convenient, is an important part of the development process, because without enjoyment, developers burn out. Companies want to treat programmers as replaceable cogs. Developers think of themselves as artisans.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

>I realised at some point that "java all the way", "haskell all the way", "php all the way" is definitely not the way Technically it's all machine code all the way anyway. :)