Comment by pdimitar
7 hours ago
> The language X was probably a good solution at first.
I would contest even that. Most of the time it's a fight or flight response by the devs, meaning that they just go with whatever they are most comfortable with.
In the previous years I made good money from switching companies away from Python and Rails, to Elixir and Golang. The gains were massive and maintainability also improved a lot.
Of course, this is not advocacy for these technologies in particular. Use the right tool for the job is a popular adage for good reasons. But my point is: people don't use the right tool for the job as often as many believe. Mostly it's gut feelings and familiarity.
And btw I am not trashing on overworked CTOs opting for Python because they never had the time to learn better web tech. I get their pain and sympathise with it a lot. But the failing of most startup CTOs that I observed was that they fell into control mania and micro-management as opposed to learning to delegate and trust. Sadly that too is a function of being busy and overworked so... I don't know. I feel for them but I still want better informed tech decisions being made. At my age and experience I am extremely tired and weary of seeing people make all the same mistakes every time.
Between Python and Elixir or Golang, I’ll stick with Python for an exploratory side project.
It’s just a better fit when you’re not quite sure what you’re building. You just gain more on the 99% of projects that never go anywhere than you lose on the one that you end up trying to turn into a real product. So calling them better web tech assumes a lot about the development process that isn’t guaranteed.
My crossover point for where I'd rather be using a static language than a dynamic one for exploration is about a week in the modern era.
In 1999 I'd agree with you completely, but static languages have gotten a lot better.
There are some cases where libraries may entirely dominate such a discussion, e.g., if you know Ruby on Rails and you have a problem right up its alley then that may blow away anything you can get in a static language. But for general tasks I find static languages get an advantage even in prototyping pretty quickly nowadays. What extra you pay generally comes back many times over in the compiler's instant feedback.
And for context, I would have called Python my favorite language from about 2000 to probably 2015 or so. This preference wasn't from lack of familiarity. Heck, I don't even regret it; if I had 2000 to 2015 to do all over again I'm not sure I'd do much differently. Static languages kind of sucked for a good long time.
You might be proving my point here because Elixir is amazing for exploration. You literally generate a project and then can immediately fiddle with it to your heart's content in a REPL.
As said though, I don't judge people who go by familiarity. But one should keep an open mind, and learning some of the modern languages (like Elixir) is much less work than many believe.
A better web tech in this case refers to having the potential to scale far above what Python can offer + have a very good developer experience. To me those two are paramount.
You can do a similar Python REPL. So I’m really unsure what you mean here? I mean it’s a little better for displaying data structures but I never really found that particularly useful.
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