What are the computer hipsters using these days?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > What are the computer hipsters using these days?

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thinkpads

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 17:20

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 20:52

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i'm working on some typescript node stuff atm and it's just not clear why would you do this instead of just using any of the better language/environment/tooling/ecosystems that are available

like it probably makes sense for your web client or whatever where your options are all horrible but for server stuff it's just bonkers, so this is probably more of a complaint about node than typescript specifically

on the plus side the work is mainly replacing and bulk deleting the typescript so it's very satisfying

# ¿ Apr 23, 2022 17:02

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is vim still the hipste editor? that whole thing was lol as hell

# ¿ Apr 23, 2022 21:51

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AI is very good at generating mindless repetitive boilerplate code so it's a great fit for C#

# ¿ Apr 25, 2022 01:05

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chaosbreather posted:

there honestly isn't a business case for writing server software in anything except javascript/typescript.

1. if you write reasonably complex things for the web you have to know javascript. even if you use a fancy dan transpilation language like elm or clojurescript or whatever you still gotta know the underlying js or you are in for a world of hurt and you can't use anyone else's poo poo

2. if you want your cool react web app to work properly for crawlers you need to do universal rendering, so the server has to do javascript anyway

3. backends are just a thin, easy layer of glue between your front end, totally managed PaaSes, auth providers and hosted serverless databases/document stores so it's insane to break out another language for that anyway. edge compute is amazing now, essentially a bit of browser that you can trust. and a lot of the time you can eliminate backend code entirely

4. why would you make it so any percentage of your team couldn't work on any part of the project, because:

5. if you can get, effectively, a mid-level full stack engineer for the price (and ubiquity) of a javascript developer you would be a raving madman not to

i hate it, really, i like being a polyglot and i keep going at work 'hey wow elixir is really cool and performant' and 'rust sure has a lot of people who are in to it hey' and they're like ahahah yeah get back to typescripting. and they're right

oh okay well the project isn't a web backend so

# ¿ Apr 25, 2022 15:45

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Canine Blues Arooo posted:

i'm trying to think how much money you'd have to pay me to write JS ever again. the number is probably north of 500k. i wouldn't do a very good job either.

as OP mentioned, using js to write servers is a strategy to "save money" by having your entry-level javascript-only developers try their hand at more expensive server dev using a runtime and ecosystem that's designed for web browsers

so its pretty much mutually exclusive with employers that would rather save money by paying 500k for experienced devs

# ¿ Apr 25, 2022 22:20

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if all you're doing is maintaining a crud app that serves 5 qps then using javascript is probably a fine way to save money since that kind of thing is pretty much a solved problem in any language, so it doesn't hurt to just use what the entry-level javascript-only devs that you exclusively hire already know

but it quickly falls apart for the project when you get out of the world of trivial crud apps. suddenly your entry-level devs are faced with having to reinvent, debug, and maintain things that have already been done better in langs/runtimes/ecosystems, ultimately taking more time than just using the right tools for the job

but giving your developers the opportunity to learn the right tools and practices would mean that suddenly they aren't entry-level anymore and can move on to someplace that's less stingy, and who would want that?

# ¿ Apr 25, 2022 22:34

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akadajet posted:

the joke is that fronted development is just as demanding as backend development if not more so

yeah totally, but that's different from requiring that everyone only learn and use a single tool for everything, regardless of whether it's appropriate. i don't think that an entire company needs to be e.g. using server tools to build their UIs either. i think a better model is to just pick suitable tools that match requirements, and to hire based on ability to learn

# ¿ Apr 25, 2022 22:43

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quote:

the amount of things that javascript doesn't have a best in class library for is almost nothing and rapidly shrinking. because it has the most engineers. because it has the most companies. because it has the most engineers to recruit and libraries to use. it's not even the cheapest at this point, it's just being able to recruit full stop.

i think this approach in thinking misses the forest for the trees. if an employer focuses on hiring people who are capable of learning the right tools to do their job efficiently (orthogonally to their current experience level, to be clear) and developing a mental model of how something works, the tools themselves aren't going to really matter. the programming language will be eclipsed by the ability to understand the underlying system or environment that the project is meant to be interacting with.

meanwhile, opting for any niche tool or library at the cost of an already well-supported version is risky. the re-implementation will still lack the documentation, tutorials, upstream maintenance, and stack overflow community of the original. if you're doing something trivial that stays within the tiny bounds of what the niche library happens to cover, then this probably won't matter. but as your project grows, it will become the guinea pig that discovers the many corner cases that the niche version doesn't support yet.

but aside from all of the other reasons that it affects the stability of the project and the productivity of the team, javascript specifically has the stink of operating in an ecosystem of penny-pinchers who are weirdly focused on reducing compensation no matter the cost, instead of investing the career development of their employees. this is a signal to prospective hires and probably explains a lot of the problems you're seeing.

in other words if someone came to me and said that i should focus on programming language instead of the stuff that actually matters to project lifecycle, i'd tell em to get lost

# ¿ Apr 26, 2022 03:19

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DaTroof posted:

this is a weird argument. i guess you mean, if you're making a greenfield app, nothing else but typescript makes sense?

making a greenfield app AND using lowest-bidder third party contractors to do it

# ¿ Apr 26, 2022 04:06

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also forgot to post earlier but thanks for the love and support everyone

# ¿ Apr 26, 2022 04:07

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i'm a dapper fortran man

# ¿ Apr 26, 2022 11:39

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are shell scripts hipster?

# ¿ Apr 27, 2022 11:34

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 20:52

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i dunno, splunk up your rear end just doesn't have the same bing to it

# ¿ Apr 28, 2022 21:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > What are the computer hipsters using these days?