The silent majority in software

Actually Nixon did several things "a non-evil person would do", Nixon as evil is a carricature.

Like giving back Native American lands, or green-lighting the first major environmental protection legislation, or to get talking with China. And of course the Vietnam war itself was escalated by the "good" JFK, and even more so Johnson.

Later presidents did things many times worse than Nixon (his Watergate business included) and got off scot-free. But Nixon had an ugly mug, and was an old-style politician, in an era when the boomers were young and "rebellious" and wanted someone more trendy.

The debate around languages often focus on syntax differences, as if they alone would make a huge difference. We need to consider the eco system as a whole.

Many have probably read the "blub paradox". The context of that article is his experience from building a product in the late nineties, when the eco system was so much smaller than what we have today. In a world where you have to invent your own frameworks and libraries to get things done, the article makes sense. I don't doubt that you will benefit from a powerful language, when you need to make something truly novel.

Today we are in a completely different solution where 90% of web startups should use one of the existing frameworks and libraries to build upon, rather than making your own. It's basic "plumbing" compared to what we used to do 20 years ago. For the remaining 10% where they need to (re)invent a database or framework, a powerful language may have advantages when your product is mostly code.

Another tendency caused by the bubble effect of HN/Reddit, is that many move on to different languages and is left with their impression of a language as it was years ago when they last used it.

One good example of this is Java. If you asked me 10 years ago, I would say that Java had stagnated. If you ask me today, I will tell you of all the improvements that have been made and many more planned. A lot of the arguments against Java is based on old articles and experiences that are no longer valid.

I am also wondering if some of the dislike is also caused by many learning it in school in an environment that has little to do with real work, but that is a different rant.

I'm not saying Java is the coolest language out there, but the massive amount of open source and battle tested frameworks like Quarkus and Spring is a differentiator. I would argue that the "Blub paradox" of yesterday should be replaced with a "Bubble paradox", where the real work is done by pragmatic developers who use an ok language with an excellent eco system.

It is sometimes frustrating to read articles about startups who clearly should have chosen better. Everything is fine in the beginning, and they write blog posts about the success they had which is circulated within the bubble. After some time they need to scale up and implement functionality that is not supported well in their eco system. They then spend time on solving problems that seem novel to them, but is basically a solved problem in a more mature eco system. Instead of growing the product, they are forced to spend time on the "glue".

To paraphrase Breaking Bad: Are we in the money business, or the programming business?

If I have to bet on two startups, where one uses the latest bubble language and the other Java, I would bet on Java in 90% of the cases. I know that they will get things done. Perhaps even modern PHP would be preferable.

Software engineers seem unique among professionals that you’re expected to maintain a hobbyist body of work that’s also your professional calling card.