[Seaside] another reason Rails gets market share andSeasidedoesn't

Jason Johnson jbjohns at libsource.com
Sat Jul 21 08:39:01 UTC 2007


Ron Teitelbaum wrote:
> I've made this argument a number of times: The number of available
> programmers for language X does not relate to the number of highly qualified
> programmers.  I used this argument mostly to support using Smalltalk over
> Java. The argument I always got back was that it does change the amount of
> money needed to hire those people, it decreases the risk to the project, and
> simplifies your support profile.  (Not to mention the guys at Bain and Co.
> knew how to asses the risk of Java and couldn't really understand the risks
> of Smalltalk enough to write up a complete audit for investors)
>   

Yea, I get those arguments as well at my large company.  And we are 
using the worst technologies available in all categories.  But as I 
mentioned before, while being frustrated with it at work, taking 3 times 
(or more with some of our crappier technologies) to do everything, on my 
train ride home I'm quite happy about the thought of some day competing 
with companies that are in this same boat. :)

> I've never really been able to counter those arguments and I've experienced
> some of the downside.  I had a programmer that was just gaa gaa over
> Borland's Delphi.  He really believed that it was the best possible gui
> development platform out there and really wanted me to let him build an
> application with it.  I relented and as you can probably guess we needed to
> support that application after he moved on.  You are right that we were able
> to support the application because of the quality of the developers, but
> even small changes required a large amount of tinkering and learning that
> would not have been necessary had I stuck to my guns and said no.
>
> Ron Teitelbaum
> President / Principal Software Engineer
> US Medical Record Specialists
> www.USMedRec.com 
>   

I understand what you're saying, but I don't see this as a cut-n-dry 
"well, we should have stuck with Java" thing.  If the technology was 
good, why didn't any of the other developers jump on board with their 
projects?  I don't believe every developer should be able to use a new 
language for every project.  But I do think those that stop changing 
have started dying. :)


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