“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” -- Bjarne Stroustrup

I've found this quote extremely true, but not just with programming language but with all things. People complain about Slack because they use Slack a lot, so minor quibbles become a daily frustration.

It is when people go quiet about a product that you should really worry. They're either extremely happy or aren't using it, might be critical to find out which.

The turning point is when tools go from something enthusiasts choose to being mandated by management.

Digging deeper on your excellent comment, when ai was inEnterprise Sales, we were taught that there were people who made buying decisions, people who influenced buying decisions, and users.

Sometimes users belonged to one of the first two categories, but often not. Companies that pivot from selling to people who use the product to selling to enterprise organizations pivot from building things for users, to building things for decision-makers and decision-influencers.

So it’s not only that management are choosing products for users, but the products themselves evolve to please managers at the expense of users.

> “There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” -- Bjarne Stroustrup

> I've found this quote extremely true

My impression of Python, Ruby, etc. hasn't been that they're in either of those categories, though I'll grant you that they don't compete in the same space as C++...

I use Ruby(not Rails) daily. I love the language. It's really good for fast prototyping or small scrips but I can complain all-day long for how bad is to maintain big codebases because of the dynamic nature of it. I really miss type hints that can make this much easier.

People complain about Python being dynamically typed, adding weird modern syntax that isn't intuitive, and breaking changes from 2.x to 3.x.

People complain about Ruby being dead, or don't talk about it at all because it's not relevant anymore.

Slack is nothing compared to JIRA in that regard. JIRA might be worst modern software I've ever been forced to use. I typically have no problems working with Slack -- everything just sort of works as I expect it to 95% of the time. The fewer questions I have to ask, the better the design.

Slack used to care about user choice, such as providing a IRC gateway. All of those customizable features have been walked back in favor of “its not us, it’s you” mentality.

It was better than everything that came before it for it's purpose, so people were happy with the improvement.

But then every time they change something, unless it is just 100% obviously better for everyone, like a speedup, it's gonna annoy some people.

People and companies alike keep forgetting that the best is the enemy of the good. They achieve success with the good and they try to get ahead of themselves with the better. Sometimes they succeed :-)