Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> If you really believe that you're going to use X because it's mainstream and really popular and be okay you're kidding yourself.

Actually, if there's anything that someone fresh out of school learns in the industry, is that you do use things that are mainstream and really popular (in the particular niche you're targeting), because that's what your colleagues and management expect.

OTOH, when people come and say, "we'll rewrite this in X - it's the hot new thing, and it can do it all so much better, so don't worry about IDE support etc!", and push it through, the usual consequence 3-5 years later is a bit-rotting codebase that is hard to work on and maintain, because the people who pitched it have moved on, the tooling was never great and now doesn't even see bug fixes, and new developers on the team have to undergo a long initial ramp-up process to be able to do anything.

Sometimes it works out, sure. Usually when the hot new thing becomes mainstream eventually. But most of them don't, so unless you like to gamble, the safest bet is to wait and see and then adopt it. Let someone else be the guinea pig. The more immediate productivity gain is very, very rarely worth the pain.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: