March 05, 2006
Marketing Programming Languages
"Language diversity is bad. What if someone has to debug your code in the middle of the night and they don't know that language? (every company, even those that don't work in the middle of the night) Don't use other languages; we don't hire for those skills. We don't trust those languages. We've invested in Fortran or Cobol or C or Java or whatever. No, no, no. "No" always comes from engineers. You build something cool and popular, and your CEO will love you for it. "
In discussing Ruby hype, Steve Yegge clearly understands software development economics yet the above is a vein of nonsense in a goldmine of an essay on hyping programming languages. "No", as often as not, comes from hiring managers with a clue and people invested in the long to medium term of the codebase who are worried about having the rug pulled from under them.
Ship productivity is only part of the picture, the part engineers decide to get. Finding people in the framework or platform of choice is an important criterion to settling on said language or framework platform. Because it's intangible, non-stuff, many peple think software is more or less disposable, but software that actually gets used can stick around for years, or decades. Not having a developer or support pool for that codebase is a problem.
Here it is - no money guy wants to be held to ransom by engineers, no matter how talented or professional or ethical the engineers are. It's just dangerous to expose yourself like that. That's why marketing a programming language is a big deal - marketing above all else manages the perception of a developer base, that lots and lots of other people are onboard with the technology. Money guys don't want to know about the benefits of steel cable suspension bridges when the job market is awash with carpenters. And if you're the only steel worker around, well, that's downright suspect, best get back to your saw...
All You People Are Monetizing Vampires
Finally, there's this gem:
"The worldwide Ruby culture is the warmest and friendliest I've seen in my long history with programming languages."
*Cough*. That's priceless. I remember the Java community being pretty cool too, way back before noise amplifiers like JavaBlogs and TSS and N million more developers came to be. The Ruby crowd exhibit a kind of zeal, more cult than community. Maybe it's just Obie. And that Obscure Rails Guy. And Why The Lucky Stiff. And The Prags. And the Ex Java Massive.
Anyways, here's a prediction. Steve Yegge is the next Greenspun|Spolsky|Graham.
March 5, 2006 12:02 AM
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