Let's assume we have two (or more) versions of a given Web application written in different programming languages--no bugs or difference as far as the user is concerned.
Would one version be more prone to success over another one?
Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#2Probably not, but one scenario which might make a difference is if the language used is disclosed to users. Fans of that language might hold up that site as an example of "See what this language can do?!", which might attract other fans of the language to the site who might otherwise not visit. See Twitter in the early days as an example (both good and bad) of Ruby/Rails, which brought a technical crowd to the site, who are great early adopters.
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#3The short answer is no. The only exception I can even think of in extremely rare cases where you program something in a language some company would not want to use and may potentially not acquire you for (which for most web languages it's not an issue), it should not dictate how successful your application is in terms of users, revenues, growth, and/or overall outcome of the company itself. You may run into scaling issues, maintenance problems, ease of training and transitioning new employees to code base or language as need, etc... but for most things, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
On the other hand, if you're asking flow of code, nuances of particular languages, available libraries, ease of hiring people, etc... to help grow what you're building, then it goes back to the age old language war debate.
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#4I think it influences success, but predicting that influence... is not easy
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#5The major thing that will influence the success of your Web startup is if you have fun making it.
So you need to choose a language that is fun using, that will let you prototype things quickly and that you feel comfortable with. This language for me is JavaScript and so far all the other alternatives have been just a pain to deal with. Node.js is just fun and simple as it should.
So if at the end you have a code-base that is not fun to work with, it will probably be hard for you to fix bugs and add features.
Stick with a language you love and it will influence the success of your startup.
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#6The short answer is no. The only exception I can even think of in extremely rare cases where you program something in a language some company would not want to use and may potentially not acquire you for (which for most web languages it's not an issue), it should not dictate how successful your application is in terms of users, revenues, growth, and/or overall outcome of the company itself. You may run into scaling i…
What if you hire developers to maintain the code? Doesn't the more readable syntax affect the developers' performance?
(Honest question, not trying to start a programming language flame war.)
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#7I think it influences success, but predicting that influence... is not easy
Right. Let's imagine that Facebook was written in Perl, YouTube in Ruby, and Twitter in PHP, do you think they would still be successful?
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#8Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#9The major thing that will influence the success of your Web startup is if you have fun making it. So you need to choose a language that is fun using, that will let you prototype things quickly and that you feel comfortable with. This language for me is JavaScript and so far all the other alternatives have been just a pain to deal with. Node.js is just fun and simple as it should. So if at the end you have a code-base…
Thank you, and I agree!
Re: Ask HN: Could the back-end language influence the success of a Web startup?
#10The short answer is no. The only exception I can even think of in extremely rare cases where you program something in a language some company would not want to use and may potentially not acquire you for (which for most web languages it's not an issue), it should not dictate how successful your application is in terms of users, revenues, growth, and/or overall outcome of the company itself. You may run into scaling i…
What if you hire developers to maintain the code? Doesn't the more readable syntax affect the developers' performance? (Honest question, not trying to start a programming language flame war.)
There are good coders, great coders, and just a bunch of awful ones. There's a difference in being able to code something that works, and something that works brilliantly, and even better at scale. That said, readability and good commenting in coding and documentation should apply in any language.
In Python for example, there's kind of a (mostly) default way of doing it. In other languages, not so much. But that doesn't mean the company culture can't push for something like this (a standard, at least to the extent in which a language permits doing so). Developers performance is more base on how they like working in a language (better to find true language agnostic developers), culture fit, personality, etc...
If you're outsourcing, that's a totally different set of traits and number of things to look for than if you're hiring in house (which I would recommend for the core team and in general anyway; hiring in house that is).