Re:Selecting a programming language can be a form of prematu...
by smt88 on Monday November 15, 2021 @04:43AM
(#29225553)
> I don't know a single highly experienced multi-lingual developer who does not reach for a dynamic language when they need to deliver something quick and easy.
If you're picking from a popular language, the language itself rarely matters for this at all. Every popular language does roughly the same things. Writing speed (length of keywords, for example) is a non-issue. The ecosystem is by far the most important thing.
It doesn't matter how efficient I am in Go if I'm missing a crucial library that I'll now have to write myself.
JavaScript is a classic example where, even if you are pretty fast at writing your code, you will be dramatically slowed down by: 1) needing to add a new package every 5 min to do something trivial, 2) looking through five half-dead libraries to find one that seems maintained and usable, and 3) finding out that some of the libraries you chose are buggy.
So for a quick prototype, I'd weight a language's qualities as follows:
- ecosystem: 90%
- static analysis/tooling: 5%
- stdlib: 3%
- syntax: 2%
And for a long-term, complex project, I'd weight them closer to:
If you're picking from a popular language, the language itself rarely matters for this at all. Every popular language does roughly the same things. Writing speed (length of keywords, for example) is a non-issue. The ecosystem is by far the most important thing.
It doesn't matter how efficient I am in Go if I'm missing a crucial library that I'll now have to write myself.
JavaScript is a classic example where, even if you are pretty fast at writing your code, you will be dramatically slowed down by: 1) needing to add a new package every 5 min to do something trivial, 2) looking through five half-dead libraries to find one that seems maintained and usable, and 3) finding out that some of the libraries you chose are buggy.
So for a quick prototype, I'd weight a language's qualities as follows:
- ecosystem: 90%
- static analysis/tooling: 5%
- stdlib: 3%
- syntax: 2%
And for a long-term, complex project, I'd weight them closer to:
- ecosystem: 50%
- static analysis/tooling: 46%
- stdlib: 3%
- syntax: 1%