> They could have built in PHP, or Ruby, Or brain fuck and been successful I suspect.
I’ve seen enough to doubt this. The less capable a tool the higher the overhead, until you reach that critical point where you spend more time managing overhead than adding features. It’s a self reinforcing cycle which makes it exponential , and it happens more quickly than people like to admit. You have to start hiring, and hiring is always a disappointment, you grow teams, communication overhead takes over, you inevitably model the product after the organization, you start making engineering choices based on realities of the hiring market, the realization sets in that “easier to hire for” is a double edged sword as talent pools differ not just in size but also quality, your organization and tech stack ossify, and suddenly you’re in the stink.
In fact I’ve never not seen this happen.
Case In point: You flippantly added brainfuck to your list there. But obviously not: clearly you can’t build WhatsApp in brainfuck and win the market. So here we are already: there is a limit. Why, then, should ruby or PHP be on the other side of that limit?
I’ve seen enough to doubt this. The less capable a tool the higher the overhead, until you reach that critical point where you spend more time managing overhead than adding features. It’s a self reinforcing cycle which makes it exponential , and it happens more quickly than people like to admit. You have to start hiring, and hiring is always a disappointment, you grow teams, communication overhead takes over, you inevitably model the product after the organization, you start making engineering choices based on realities of the hiring market, the realization sets in that “easier to hire for” is a double edged sword as talent pools differ not just in size but also quality, your organization and tech stack ossify, and suddenly you’re in the stink.
In fact I’ve never not seen this happen.
Case In point: You flippantly added brainfuck to your list there. But obviously not: clearly you can’t build WhatsApp in brainfuck and win the market. So here we are already: there is a limit. Why, then, should ruby or PHP be on the other side of that limit?
I doubt it.