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Boring Technology Checklist

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Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#21

Post by radiator »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #10
TacticalCoder wrote: post #8

Weirdly enough I do believe Clojure ticks the boxes from that checklist. It's familiar in that it both "supports popular language runtimes" (runs on top of the JVM or transpiles to JavaScript) and it's a Lisp dialect (or close enough) and Lisps have been around since a very long time. It's incredibly stable: so stable some libraries commonly used haven't been updated in years . There's also very little code churn ins…

How about hiring though? If you have a vacancy for a Clojure developer, how many applicants could you expect? When it comes to programming languages, I'd stick to the top 10 languages if your company isn't hip enough to attract a certain kind of developer on its own.

It almost sounds like you don't believe that developers can learn new languages.

Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#22

Post by allochthon »

The discussion around "boring" technology is an important one. Where to draw the line will be pretty context-dependent. An aerospace firm will put the line here, and a tech startup focusing on a low-risk use case will draw the line somewhere else. And the developers and other stakeholders will be relevant as well. In this context, the checklist at the bottom is interesting food for thought. But I would be wary of relying on it for choices around what technology to adopt, because such decisions will always need to be considered in context. In that sense, the checklist feels well-meaning and even insightful, but a little too concrete.

Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#23

Post by Scarbutt »

radiator wrote: post #21
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about hiring though? If you have a vacancy for a Clojure developer, how many applicants could you expect? When it comes to programming languages, I'd stick to the top 10 languages if your company isn't hip enough to attract a certain kind of developer on its own.

It almost sounds like you don't believe that developers can learn new languages.

The majority of companies want you to be productive on day one.

Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#24

Post by 9dev »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13
mrkentutbabi wrote: post #2

What about between 2 boring technologies? For example I’m debating between Eleventy and Hugo (because I know both JS and Go, but not Ruby so I will skip Jekyll)

The fact you worry about what language they're written in - while you shouldn't need to ever edit any of their code - already implies they're not boring and you're overthinking the decision already. Pick the one that gets you up and running the fastest, ideally one that doesn't rely on you installing additional runtimes.

In principle you’re absolutely right, but Hugo actually comes with lots of strings attached due to their choice of Go, like having to use Go templates for example - which can be weird if you don’t have a Go background. The more elaborate constructs you’re trying to build, the more you need to research how the Hugo Go runtime works to sort out quirks.

Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#25

Post by chrisweekly »

mrkentutbabi wrote: post #2

What about between 2 boring technologies? For example I’m debating between Eleventy and Hugo (because I know both JS and Go, but not Ruby so I will skip Jekyll)

Before you spend much time on a pure (thus limited) SSG, I recommend taking a close look at https://Remix.run. Remix supports a superset of Eleventy or Hugo (or Jekyll or even NextJS export). It's too new to be considered "boring", but it leverages OG web standards and defaults to web platform-native foundations. Given its provenance and the authors' bona fides, I'm betting heavy it sticks around for the long haul. I'm unaffiliated w the project, but I've been doing web-related things for a living since 1998, and for me Remix is a breath of fresh air and the successor to NextJS as my framework of choice.

Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#27

Post by darksaints »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #8

Weirdly enough I do believe Clojure ticks the boxes from that checklist. It's familiar in that it both "supports popular language runtimes" (runs on top of the JVM or transpiles to JavaScript) and it's a Lisp dialect (or close enough) and Lisps have been around since a very long time. It's incredibly stable: so stable some libraries commonly used haven't been updated in years . There's also very little code churn ins…

I'd agree that clojure fits the boring tag, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately it's also dying. While many old libraries and tools are stable and functional, nothing new is really being created with it. The same couldn't be said for boring technologies like Java or Python.

Re: Boring Technology Checklist

#30

Post by twobitshifter »

darksaints wrote: post #27
TacticalCoder wrote: post #8

Weirdly enough I do believe Clojure ticks the boxes from that checklist. It's familiar in that it both "supports popular language runtimes" (runs on top of the JVM or transpiles to JavaScript) and it's a Lisp dialect (or close enough) and Lisps have been around since a very long time. It's incredibly stable: so stable some libraries commonly used haven't been updated in years . There's also very little code churn ins…

I'd agree that clojure fits the boring tag, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately it's also dying. While many old libraries and tools are stable and functional, nothing new is really being created with it. The same couldn't be said for boring technologies like Java or Python.

What about clojurescript?
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