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YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

charliereese.ca

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Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#101

Post by dyeje »

cryptica wrote: post #63
dstick wrote: post #2

The title seems to insinuate there’s a correlation between a startup’s value and dev language. While I think our “inner geek“ all likes to think so - is that really the case?

There is no correlation. Success is 100% business connections. Even if the CTO was terrible, it wouldn't matter because the most talented devs would be applying to work for this hot new startup and would be able to work around all of the CTO's silly constraints. I have seen this over and over in my career. The CTO imposes pointless arbitrary rules, tools and languages and then talented developers figure out a way to…

No correlation is a bold claim. It seems obvious that a web based startup built using Rails is far more likely to succeed than one using bash scripts, if all else is roughly equal.

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#102

Post by csmattryder »

nayaketo wrote: post #85
csmattryder wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is starting from a negative perception amongst a lot of engineers, and unless they can provide some sort of killer reason to use .NET technologies Yeah, as stated above, I used to build on .NET back when WinForms was king. ASP MVC wasn't fun to write, Rails was a blast. If you haven't got C# experience, I can understand the apprehension. History repeats itself and almost definitely MS will get it wrong ag…

> Winforms was king. MVC wasn't fun to write with Having worked with both, I have exactly opposite feelings about the two platforms. Except speed of development, I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Webforms.

Ah no! While a standard thing to do for the web, WinForms let you do the strangest stuff like mimicking OS X for a piece of Windows-only software.

My excuse is I was seventeen at the time... Back then, I was afraid of both hard graft and human interface guidelines.

https://mattryder.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/capture.png

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#103

Post by [deleted] »

mellavora wrote: post #99
brainless wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Python by choice and the more there is growing need for Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Data Mining, the more I can not leave Python. I try Rust, Ruby and others on the side. But Python is just so heavily fortified now that I constantly suggest startups who are going to build non-trivial tech to select Python. Also the whole Linux, deployment, etc. space is filled with Python. Biology, Physics, M…

what about R? or Scala if you need bigger scale?

[deleted]

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#104

Post by treis »

charliereese wrote: post #95
mlkmt wrote: post #18

Some of these are wrong: Rappi used PHP exclusively for it's first year, for instance

If you can send me a source for that (on Twitter @charlieinthe6), I'm happy to make that change!

You have Go listed for Twitch, but justin.tv launched in 2007 and Go didn't exist until 2009.

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#105

Post by pdonis »

mumblemumble wrote: post #91
codesections wrote: post #60

This serves as an interesting counterpoint to Paul Graham's Beating the Averages[0] essay (which argues for using a powerful programming language as a secret weapon to allow a startup to outperform its competitors). Reading this list, I'm struck by just how mainstream the languages are. I don't have anything against Python or Ruby, but it'd be hard to describe either as a secret weapon — indeed, about the only "secre…

He wrote that essay nearly 2 decades ago. It was a different world. At the time, the only language with a truly comprehensive open source ecosystem was perl, so, if you were going to work on anything else, there was a decent chance you'd end up writing almost everything yourself. That puts you in a spot where your secret weapon is the language itself. Nowadays, I'd argue that the secret weapon is never the language i…

> Viaweb sold for a lot of money. But then it turned out that it was an unmaintainable mess that needed to be rewritten

I think that's because the code after the sale had to meet different requirements than the code before the sale.

Before the sale, the chief requirement, at least from what I gather from pg's essays, was fast implementation of new features. That was the secret weapon, and Lisp was a key enabler for it. The number of people touching the code was very small, so having the code be understandable by others was not a high priority.

After the sale, the chief requirement, I suspect, was maintainability while running at scale. The before-the-sale period had already sufficiently explored the feature space that fast implementation of new features was no longer a requirement, so the advantages of Lisp were no longer crucial. But having code that lots of people could understand and modify reliably was crucial.

So the code had to be rewritten after the sale. That doesn't mean the code before the sale was bad, just that it was tailored to different requirements.

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#106

Post by skavi »

hboon wrote: post #31
jamil7 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my annecdotal experience (could be completely wrong) Python and Django are much more common for the same vintage of startups in Europe as when Ruby and Rails were popular in the USA, I don't exactly know what drove it's adoption here.

Maybe related: One of Django's creators, Simon Willison is British. I think he worked at Guardian. He's on HN too.

The creator of Ruby on Rails is Danish[0].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#107

Post by ronanyeah »

dyeje wrote: post #97
ronanyeah wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language comparison is not subjective if the person has experience using both. Otherwise it is guessing.

It is still subjective. There is no objective way to use each language to build a product.

https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#108

Post by inopinatus »

chaostheory wrote: post #24
johnny_reilly wrote: post #4

Fascinating to see how heavily Ruby and Python feature. The things that surprised me by their absence and near absence were languages I love: JS and C# That said, this is taking now well established startups that will have begun their lives 5+ years ago in general. If I was picking a back end stack then I'd probably hesitate before picking the .NET Framework. But these days I'd easily pick .NET Core. Likewise, I'd wa…

Node will probably start showing up more, though I'd say its biggest weakness is that there's no full framework (that takes care of everything) that's truly dominant. Working in node, feels like working in Java, especially if you're using Typescript. Unlike Ruby and Python, Javascript / TS suffers from the paradox of choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

Javascript's ecosystem isn't just fragmented, it is downright capricious. In all my decades in tech, I've never seen an environment where dependencies rot out of maintainability faster.

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#109

Post by hboon »

skavi wrote: post #106
hboon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe related: One of Django's creators, Simon Willison is British. I think he worked at Guardian. He's on HN too.

The creator of Ruby on Rails is Danish[0]. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson

I know. And DHH worked on Basecamp and they are US based.

Re: YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

#110

Post by ponderingfish »

johnny_reilly wrote: post #4

Fascinating to see how heavily Ruby and Python feature. The things that surprised me by their absence and near absence were languages I love: JS and C# That said, this is taking now well established startups that will have begun their lives 5+ years ago in general. If I was picking a back end stack then I'd probably hesitate before picking the .NET Framework. But these days I'd easily pick .NET Core. Likewise, I'd wa…

Ruby on Rails in particular made it really easy to get up and going in a few hours or days. I think Python with Django and Flask has occupied that spot.

And for ML and AI-focussed startups, Python is a no-brainer.

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