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Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#151

Post by The_rationalist »

johnnylambada wrote: post #69
The_rationalist wrote: post #11

Kotlin is my new favorite language. You should give it a try. Fighting syntax noise, clutter, boilerplate and redundant repetitive work is a big chunk of what define a modern language, and at this, Kotlin is probably the best. It will make you more productive AND happier. BTW using new languages that have relatively poor ecosystem (go, rust, swift, elixir) is a far riskier choice than people believe. Having a poor li…

Kotlin is great fun when compared to Java, and having access to years of libs helps concentrate on the business problem. I don't understand what all the downvotes of the parent are for.

I don't understand what all the downvotes of the parent are for. Maybe that hiding the cold hard truth about new languages is a survival behavior from activists?

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#153

Post by K0SM0S »

pizza234 wrote: post #128
K0SM0S wrote: post #6

If you're in the web sector, definitely give a try to wasm. Have a go at Rust while you're at it — see what I did there? I'm personally hot for GraphQL because it's a powerful paradigm to model data. Both Go and Rust are incredibly interesting languages, in very different ways. In some ideal world, Go fits in a scaling/efficiency vertical somewhere in-between C and C++ (it's very specific but it basically encompasses…

Go has a runtime, so it's not correct to compare it to C/C++. Probably it's more accurate to say that Go is the next generation Java/C#. Regarding Rust, it's a systems programming language (with this definition, one can skip the different opinions about it being "more C" or "more C++"), with the implications of the category: primarily, that it's undesirable for web developers to deal with the overhead of systems prog…

I bow to your technical points, I stand corrected; however in terms of problem space, actual production use-cases, do you really think Go is anywhere near C#/Java? Most devs in these languages tend to feel hampered by the roughness, the essentialism of Go[1]; whereas typical C++/C solutions benefit greatly from a simpler, indeed essential approach — think that it was designed in-house by/for Google, which is a giant pile of microservices at its core, with thousands of engineers interacting on the base.

I mean Go is a systems/middleware dream, but I wouldn't start there for BI, enterprise-y, "expressive" code. I'm not sure to which extent Go at Google replaced Java or C++ but my money is on the latter.

I'm not stating this as "fact", really open to the discussion! I have much to learn, and this is not speaking from experience but rather perception, extensive but nonetheless second-hand knowledge.

Regarding Rust, good points, good food for thought. Thanks.

Edit notes:

[1] "no generics!" — "wth error handling `if err != nil { return err }`" — which are godsend to other devs, other domains.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#154

Post by azangru »

elicash wrote: post #113
kugelblitz wrote: post #59

Sorry if offensive or presumptuous, I assume you are max. 30 years old? Being a freelancer the last 5 years (previously doing webdev part-time for 15 years) and having a couple of long-term side projects, I've been "burnt" enough that I've gotten tired of chasing shiny tech, just for it to become abandoned (e.g. bower, grunt, AngularJS) or introduce big breaking changes (e.g. some upgrade paths in PHP's Laravel or Sy…

What a condescending response. Yes, this person is a student. No reason to act like this.

> No reason to act like this.

Not the author of the parent comment; but with bristling replies like this, aren’t you dismissing the experience of those who, through years of experience, have become weary, and disillusioned, and a bit cynical? Isn't it also a valuable perspective (don't go for the new and shiny; stick with the tried and true), delivered in exactly the same way many older craftsmen have historically shared their knowledge with the younger and more enthusiastic ones?

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#155

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Aardwolf wrote: post #142
scarface74 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to know of the new tech, but I think diving deep into new tech just because it might seem cool now can be frustrating and inefficient long-term. There is no “long term” in technology. The best way on average to stay competitive is by keeping up with what the market wants. Sure it’s possible to start a project that is profitable or that you can get someone to acquire but statistically that’s like buying…

> There is no “long term” in technology. Yes there is, computer science concepts like algorithms, pointers, ... exist for a very long time. General programming language principles and paradigms are reusable in other languages and libraries. Database principles and languages like SQL exist for a very long time. HTTP exists for a very long time. etc... If you know enough of those long standing principles, you can use "…

Spot on! Very often throwing frameworks at a problem only makes it worse.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#156

Post by scarface74 »

Aardwolf wrote: post #142
scarface74 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to know of the new tech, but I think diving deep into new tech just because it might seem cool now can be frustrating and inefficient long-term. There is no “long term” in technology. The best way on average to stay competitive is by keeping up with what the market wants. Sure it’s possible to start a project that is profitable or that you can get someone to acquire but statistically that’s like buying…

> There is no “long term” in technology. Yes there is, computer science concepts like algorithms, pointers, ... exist for a very long time. General programming language principles and paradigms are reusable in other languages and libraries. Database principles and languages like SQL exist for a very long time. HTTP exists for a very long time. etc... If you know enough of those long standing principles, you can use "…

I’ve been working for 20+ years, dozens of successful interviews and the last time I had anything approaching knowing “algorithms and computer concepts” is over 20 years ago writing low level cross platform C.

Most software developers are “dark matter developers” doing “enterprise applications” that will never see the light of day outside of the company or yet another SASS CRUD app.

Most of those hiring managers could care less if you know anything about pointers and algorithms.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#158

Post by mindvirus »

I can't say this is what you should learn, but what I've been learning recently and enjoying:

1. Ionic Framework with React/Typescript (https://ionicframework.com/blog/announcing-ionic-react/). I've never done much frontend work or mobile development before, but it's a lot of fun. Ionic makes it easy to make a PWA and access native device functions. Typescript is one of the nicest languages I've coded in - the type inference is wonderful and the linters catch a ton of mistakes I wouldn't have otherwise.

2. Flask + Python. Really enjoy the simplicity of Python. I've been getting into type annotations with MyPy. I honestly have mixed feelings about Python - for small projects/exploring data it's been fantastic, but I feel really limited by the lack of type safety when things get bigger. I've also been playing with some BDD frameworks (behave and pytest-bdd), since I really want to get a better understanding of how to build effective testing infrastructure.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#159

Post by zinclozenge »

azangru wrote: post #154
elicash wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a condescending response. Yes, this person is a student. No reason to act like this.

> No reason to act like this. Not the author of the parent comment; but with bristling replies like this, aren’t you dismissing the experience of those who, through years of experience, have become weary, and disillusioned, and a bit cynical? Isn't it also a valuable perspective (don't go for the new and shiny; stick with the tried and true), delivered in exactly the same way many older craftsmen have historically sh…

There are plenty of reasons to learn new languages and frameworks. Dismissing them because of 'new and shiny' is not a good reason.

Re: Ask HN: What Technologies to Learn in 2020?

#160

Post by scarface74 »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #155
Aardwolf wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no “long term” in technology. Yes there is, computer science concepts like algorithms, pointers, ... exist for a very long time. General programming language principles and paradigms are reusable in other languages and libraries. Database principles and languages like SQL exist for a very long time. HTTP exists for a very long time. etc... If you know enough of those long standing principles, you can use "…

Spot on! Very often throwing frameworks at a problem only makes it worse.

Even if I agree in theory - and that’s the reason I have avoided front end development - whether using a framework is “better” or not is irrelevant if you need a paycheck. If the market demands knowing AngularReactWASMJs and you’re a front end developer, you have to have it on your resume.
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