
The Magpie Developer (2008) - brudgers
https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-magpie-developer/
======
rob74
There's a lot of truth in this post... however I would add a step to David
Megginson's "programming language cycle":

 _5a. Some of the regular developers resent a new language being forced upon
them, so the public opinion on the language becomes more negative._

I would say Go is currently already in phase 5a/6, while Rust is still in 3/4
- however I have to add that I think both languages are here to stay, so
there's more to them than just the hype...

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codesections
> If you consider that, statistically, the vast majority of programmers have
> yet to experience a dynamic language of any kind – much less Ruby – the
> absurdity here is sublime.

Was that really anywhere close to true in 2008? I would have thought that most
developers would have known at least one of Perl, Python, Javascript, or Ruby
(or Bash; not sure if he'd count that one).

Am I mistaken about the history there?

~~~
taneq
Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev, Ruby wasn't really
used at all, and Python was still fairly niche (although gaining ground).
There were a LOT of C, C++, Java developers back then, especially in the
enterprise space, who'd never touched any of the above.

~~~
codesections
> Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev

Wasn't Perl used pretty extensively for sysadmin tasks, too? It's a dependency
of a lot of Unix tools (e.g., git) and I thought that dated to around that
time or a bit before.

For what it's worth, this video[0] gives the following percentages for some
dynamic languages in 2008:

    
    
      JavaScript....21%
      PHP...........21%
      Python.........8%
      Ruby...........4%
      Perl...........4%
      Matlab.........3%
      =================
      TOTAL.........60%
    

(I totally forgot about PHP earlier. Oops!)

So I stand my my initial claim that it wasn't the case that the _vast_
majority of programmers had yet to experience a dynamic language. Though I can
understand it seeming that way to Atwood; didn't he mostly do application
development?

[0]: Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI)

~~~
taneq
Fair call on Perl and sysadmin tasks. As for the others I just went from
memory so clearly others had more exposure than I was aware of. (Whether
interpreted languages were "real" programming languages is another debate to
be had between the quiche-eaters and the hairy-chested stereotypes.)

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chrisbuc
These are what I call CV projects. Technology is chosen because it looks good
on someone's CV rather than the suitability of the technology to the given
problem

~~~
Ididntdothis
If you want your resume to look good you have two options. Either you work on
prestigious projects (or do boring stuff at a prestigious company like Google)
or you use the latest shiniest tools. Most projects in enterprises are very
mundane and unimpressive so your next best option is to always jump on the
latest and shiniest. It’s a very rational choice. If you always do what’s best
and most efficient for the company you run the risk of not being employable in
the future.

When I look at the job ads my company puts out, most devs who work there at
the moment would not get hired because they don’t use the tech the company is
asking for.

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redact207
Funnily I find that the new and the shiny is a rebranding of the old and the
stable. The difference is a new language + name + platform. I think this is an
endless cycle as we see new developers come in and discover old concepts in
new frameworks.

Once you've been through a few of these cycles it's easy to get jaded and
burnt out, which is when older Devs may push back on the new. I don't think
it's because they're changed adverse, just that they doubt the benefit of
doing something they already know in the flavour of the month
framework/language.

I'm guilty of all of this and have been through several burn outs. Nowadays I
accept that everything will always be changing, and to keep an open mind to
avoid dismissing things that are truly revolutionary.

~~~
mrweasel
One of the realizations I think comes with age, or experience, is that what
most of us do isn't that special.

When you're young, or new to the world of IT, it's easy to look to Google,
Netflix, Twitter and other tech giants and be fascinated by the challenges
they face and the tools they develop of cope with those challenges.

While I continued to be fascinated by new solution, new frameworks and
whatnot, I also try to set it into the context for which is was developed. For
instance, I had a customer who had chosen Cassandra as their database, but the
total size of the dataset was never going to be more than a few hundred MB.
It's not that Cassandra is bad or even wrong, it was just developed for
something different and was only picked because it was new and exciting.

Ops team are in my experience better at rejecting the new shiny, because it's
often not really ready to be properly managed. The operations side of are
often takes years to mature and no one wants to get up a 3AM to debug some
bonkers system that was picked only because some developer thought it would be
interesting.

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oftenwrong
Funny to see the comments bashing the new and shiny Ruby on Rails. Now Rails
is boring and proven.

~~~
projektfu
New Years 2008 is when Zed Shaw published “Rails is a Ghetto”. We know that a
lot of soul searching happened in the community after that and it got a lot
stronger since then.

