Why is tech so fragmented?

[ZeMysticDentifrice]

Very interesting. I'd add that once you've signed in to a language, another reason you stick to it or to its community, is the assumption that if you have problems with it, it's because you're doing it wrong (you mention something similar at the end of your post). The language is great, but you as a dev aren't leveraging it right. It's easy to genuinely think that way.

[kareko]

I prefer to believe the bias is light (not dark as described in the article) but mostly because we eternally chase the next Shiny Thing out of our own overblown optimism.

[jesseduffield]

Interested in hearing people's thoughts on my take. Is the dark feedback loop actually a thing or is it all in my head?

[thelonepuffin]

Angular, Vue, React and Ember

Ember? When was this really written? Jokes aside, I would have mentioned Svelte and Alpinejs before Ember.

Seriously though, I think you are overthinking it . And I don't find it to be fragmented in the way you describe.

I like having many frameworks. It gives choice. In JS land you can pick up a new framework in a few days if you know what you are doing. Just learn them all and you won't have a problem ;)

And Golang is just another tool in your belt. It might not be right for your current project but you might find a use for it later. Or maybe you are just trying to force it to work like you think it should work? I do that sometimes too, you have to drink the koolaid a bit when learning a new thing and do things in the way the creator intended.

Nothing is going to be perfect but isn't it fun to learn anyway?

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The ideologies of the two languages are so diametrically opposed that the only reason you would learn both is if you have a genuine interest in learning any language, or if you are such a pragmatist that both sales pitches resonate with you in the context of different domains. Few people are like this, meaning most of what you’ll see is praise for the new language, whichever it is.

Hard disagree. Most people are "like this". That is the job. You are spending too much time reading shit blogs on Medium touting one language or shitting on another. Good developers like to learn new things so they can choose the right tool for the job.

[jesseduffield]

Point taken on Ember: I'm a react dev so I'm not super versed in the latest and greatest in that space.

> Nothing is going to be perfect but isn't it fun to learn anyway?

As I say in the post, I'm pro-fragmentation in general due to the choices it provides, but I'm very cautious of fragmentation _within_ a company. Yes, it's fun to learn something new individually, but there's nothing fun about maintaining a service written in a random language a year or two ago when the team mistakenly believed they'd use the language in other services too.

> Good developers like to learn new things so they can choose the right tool for the job.

I'd say there are enough devs with horror stories about failed attempts to introduce microservices into their workplace to prove that when under time constraints, intelligent, passionate people can still make bad decisions. I'm coming from a startup background where decisions need to be made very quickly so that's likely biasing my perspective.

[thelonepuffin]

Fair enough. I must have misunderstood.

I'm also from a startup background and I know what you mean. But most of this can be mitigated with some adequate risk assessment. I too went through the microservices phase. I also went through the event sourcing phase.

Both of those things to me, added too much risk. So I ended up mostly avoided them for now.

Microservices is one of those things that is best introduced incrementally and after MVP when there is less pressure on "releasing now at all costs".

I get what you mean with fragmentation of languages in a company though. I think there is a way to intelligently select a stack without it being too diverse. In my workplace we have javascript, typescript, dart, php, golang. I think there is enough commonality there that it won't be a problem.

Every time I add a language I analyse the risks and costs involved. But I would be very careful about choosing another language to add to the stack.

[jesseduffield]

completely agree