2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results • Hacker News Board

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#71

Post by burlesona » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

Separately from my other comment, you said Python and Ruby are very similar in style and goal, and what are you overlooking?

As someone who has done a decade of Rails development and works in a Ruby + Python shop, I'd say you haven't overlooked anything.

Ruby and Python are so similar in style and tradeoffs that it's quite difficult to make a case for one _language_ over the other for any particular task.

So then it comes down to (1) ecosystem and (2) personal preference.

For a long-time Ruby has had a better web ecosystem. I'd argue this is still true, but I don't know if it will last. The reason is that Python's overall ecosystem has developed a lot more than Ruby's and the overall larger community is really valuable.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#72

Post by dajohnson89 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

Calling yourself old at 32 doesn't really help the problem of ageism.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#73

Post by johndubchak » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

andy_adams wrote: post #36

rootusrootus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no hard evidence, but from a business perspective I have figured that one of the main appeals of Python is the combination of simple and strict that defines the community. Some languages ( cough Perl cough ) are practically art, and that frequently translates to a steep learning curve for new developers to a project, which in turn means cost to the business. Bringing on a new developer to a Python team feels l…

Given that students are probably learning Python in university, I could see this being a strong reason for its growth. I hadn't thought of the "manager" angle - it makes sense that it's easier to plug a new developer into a Python codebase than it is a Rails codebase.

To me, Python's rise in growth centers more around its appeal to the Data Science community and the ease of non-programmer types to pick it up and use it effectively with a much smaller investment of training time. Ruby, although much more flexible of a language is much more difficult for a non-programmer to pick up easily.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#74

Post by vturner » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

Curious about the salaries for the top four paying technology languages. Three of the four for US are functional focused languages, and for global all four are functional focused.

As someone learning Scala, this is both encouraging and interesting, and I'm curious as to any explanation to the table result. Do functional programming languages increase developer productivity so significantly that a single developer can command such compensation? Do these languages attract highly productive developers whom the market compensates for their productivity? Something else?

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#75

Post by geodel » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

So Scala is among most dreaded right below Java at 41.7%. Considering in popularity it's quite low at 3.8%, it seem surprising to me.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#76

Post by leowoo91 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

measure2xcut1x wrote: post #67

As a solo indie developer running my own saas business for 20+ years now, and rarely interacting with other devs, this survey is priceless. I often wonder where I and my stack/tools are in relation to the rest of the field. This report (even if it is biased or skewed) makes me feel like I'm not alone and gives me some validation on my life path and technology choices.

"He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass" - Edgar Fiedler

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#77

Post by burlesona » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

web007 wrote: post #61

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

I can speak to the RoR dread side, as someone who is now in Django-land coming from RoR. RoR is ridiculously opinionated. If you don't know The Ruby Way then you'll be fighting the framework for every inch of productivity. It also has a lot more magic than any other framework I've ever used. It hides so much of what it does behind abstractions on top of abstractions that it's hard to do a simple thing and understand…

Over the years I've ramped a couple dozen engineers onto Rails. The very first thing I have them do is follow the full rails tutorial front to back, no matter how many years of experience they have. It usually takes a day or so.

I've found that after doing that, people (1) get it easily, (2) don't feel it's "magical", and (3) enjoy the environment.

Conversely, SENIOR engineers on other teams who did not go through this process often express sentiments like you did. At this point I can pretty much guarantee the people who are salty about Rails are people who don't normally need to read the manual. They didn't read the Rails manual, and they're confused, and they're not used to being confused, and so they get grumpy and bitter about that over time.

Personally, I like Rails. But I do think that the "convention over configuration" approach has this major tradeoff - you really shouldn't just dive in and figure it out, you should read the manual first. And I get it why some people don't like that and don't think it should be necessary.

So yeah, it's opinionated, and thus it's polarizing.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#78

Post by umvi » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #53

Bittersweet to see how much “distracting work environment” is reported to reduce productivity, given that companies abjectly refuse to provide private & quiet workspaces despite it being unequivocally cost effective to do so even for most start-ups in dense urban centers. I continue to find the discussion of salary disappointing though. The survey provides a good opportunity for more detailed information.

I personally find non-private settings where you can easily collaborate with other developers more productive.

When I am alone in an office, there is a higher temptation to waste time on reddit/youtube and I am less likely to talk to other developers outside of IM apps.

But when I'm in an open office/lab environment I find I'm more likely to stay on task and also more likely to get unstuck on something thanks to close proximity to other developers.

Everyone is different.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#79

Post by snarkyturtle » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

The main reason why Python is trending is mostly because of the data science community. Things like Pandas, NumPy, Jupyter Notebooks and Tensorflow all are built on python, mostly because of its simplicity and ease-of-use more than anything.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#80

Post by strikelaserclaw » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #47

Kudos to the Visual Studio Code team for all its success. VS Code and TypeScript, are kinds of technologies and tools that just win entirely on their strong merit, in spite the image of who has created them. .NET Core is getting up there too. MS has always been a developer friendly company but they are definitely earning mindshare back from non .NET developers.

Microsoft seems to be killing it lately.