Last night I was reading Considering Ajax on IBM's DeveloperWorks site. There was a quote near the top of the page:
"When we were young, we were told that 'Everybody else is doing it' was a really stupid reason to do something. Now it's the standard reason for picking a particular software package." -- Barry Gehm
I agree that language popularity should not be the primary reason for picking a particular software package. Nor should how innovative and advanced it is. The primary reasons should be:
- Suitability to particular software development task.
- Effectiveness of developers with selected language.
Of course the 2nd point does take into account the popularity and how supported it is. If you cannot find any developers to work in a specific language, then it isn't a good choice no matter now suitable it is, unless the developers can become effective and productive quickly in the language.
Really the 1st point is the most important. Sure, the innovation and advancements in the language are important in this area too, but much less so then the other elements of its suitability.
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2 comments:
Jim - you are totally correct that that "group-think" sometimes is used to evaluate languages.
The obverse is that some effective languages are despised "because everybody else does". Often the minor failings of some language are magnified beyond merit until it becomes reviled.
We programmers like to think of ourselves as more logical than the business folks, yet we sometimes fail to apply logic to our own work choices.
Jim - you are totally correct that that "group-think" sometimes is used to evaluate languages.
The obverse is that some effective languages are despised "because everybody else does". Often the minor failings of some language are magnified beyond merit until it becomes reviled.
We programmers like to think of ourselves as more logical than the business folks, yet we sometimes fail to apply logic to our own work choices.
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