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YC Software Startups: Value and Initial Programming Language Used

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

#151

Post by [deleted] »

mumblemumble wrote: post #115
pdonis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

That's one way of looking at it. I tend to prefer the mountaineer's ethos when thinking about goals for grinding out a new application: Getting to the top doesn't count if you can't get safely back down again.

[deleted]

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

#152

Post by jd_mongodb »

tyre wrote: post #120
dcolkitt wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd caution people outside hyper-growth startups from drawing that much from this chart. People in that ecosystem have very different utility functions than most software engineers. Comparatively, I'm sure a chart with database swapped out for language would show a huge over-representation of NoSQL products like Mongo and Couchbase. Yet for the overwhelming majority of projects the right answer is just use a solid SQ…

I couldn’t imagine doing anything in MongoDB or understand why that is desirable. We have used Postgres from day 1 in March and are now 1200 people. Managing growth with a JSON blob sounds absolutely insane. You need _more_ guarantees, not fewer.

The common misconception is that MongoDB stores JSON blobs. The JSON you see is converted seamlessly to BSON and is type encoded. This allows use to apply indexes at any level in the object and use complex query expressions at any level in the object.

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

#153

Post by scollet »

908B64B197 wrote: post #124
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…

I recall the bootcamp craze that happened a few years ago and most of them were Ruby (with Rails) based. The result of that is that if I lookup basic concepts in web dev today I'll still find a lot of tutorials and courses aimed at total beginners for Ruby. Meaning that even today, Ruby would be a good choice for CS students in a program where they have no web dev course if they wanted to get a small website running.…

I started learning Python some 7 months after starting to learn C (my first language). I didn't really grok logical program structure until the burden of mem management was behind me.

So, relieving that burden allowed me a playground to pseudocode a program and then translate that logic to a more optimized inplementation.

I still use that strategy in forming mental models.

But now it's a matter of placing weak joints on a pipeline and accepting bottlenecks where they arise.

Can I MVP in 2-6 weeks on those 10 (the startup) alpha users? Fine. Can I leverage my engineering strengths and understand replacement priorities? That's my goal and I run very far from startups that want to build panickedly with toothpicks and glue.

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

#154

Post by mtnGoat »

adoxyz wrote: post #134
tyre wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn’t imagine doing anything in MongoDB or understand why that is desirable. We have used Postgres from day 1 in March and are now 1200 people. Managing growth with a JSON blob sounds absolutely insane. You need _more_ guarantees, not fewer.

Have you evaluated MongoDB to see why it's desirable? Ignorance of a technology is a poor excuse to crap on it. I've used many different technologies over my 15 year career. SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, Firebase, etc. Each worked well enough, each had it's drawbacks. I'm not here to tell you MongoDB is a silver bullet for every specific use case, but from personal experience I haven't run into an instance wh…

Every project I've worked in, got rid of mongo once they grew to any reasonable size due to cost and maintenance overhead. It's not a hindrance for small projects, but becomes a pain at scale in my experience. Based on that I'd never use it again for anything I plan to scale, gutting it out later is a pain. Might as well build it right the first time.

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

#155

Post by robodale »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #82
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…

.NET Core can deploy to Linux now. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy... It's also faster than Node. Significantly faster. I was troubleshooting a connection issue to a db from a .NET Core API so I set up a NodeJS API hitting the same db to isolate it to the connection. After I was done fixing things, I compared the API response speeds for the same thing. .NET Core outperformed Node dramatic…

I've been running a website and API with .NET Core for over a year...deploying to Digital Ocean droplets that run Ubuntu. Using MySQL instead of PostGres, sorry HN. It all runs like a champ, and costs me $17.05 USD per month. I only have about 100 users, so I'll scale if/when needed. I built it all on a refurb $700 macbook air I bought in 2016.

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

#156

Post by robodale »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #82
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…

.NET Core can deploy to Linux now. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy... It's also faster than Node. Significantly faster. I was troubleshooting a connection issue to a db from a .NET Core API so I set up a NodeJS API hitting the same db to isolate it to the connection. After I was done fixing things, I compared the API response speeds for the same thing. .NET Core outperformed Node dramatic…

...and I can concur on the performance. It's hilariously fast.
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