[CLUE-Talk] On hackers, productivity, and languages

[Jed S. Baer]

Found this interesting article on programming and hackers. I'll paste in a
few 'graphs -- ought to be good for a little weekend diversion.


When you decide what infrastructure to use for a project, you're not just
making a technical decision. You're also making a social decision, and
this may be the more important of the two. For example, if your company
wants to write some software, it might seem a prudent choice to write it
in Java. But when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community.
The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be
as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python.
[2] And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the
language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer
Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of
those languages.
...
I've read that Java has just overtaken Cobol as the most popular language.
As a standard, you couldn't wish for more. But as a medium of expression,
you could do a lot better. Of all the great programmers I can think of, I
know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the
great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know
of zero.

Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not
just because it's better, but because it gives them more control. Good
hackers insist on control. This is part of what makes them good hackers:
when something's broken, they need to fix it. You want them to feel this
way about the software they're writing for you. You shouldn't be surprised
when they feel the same way about the operating system.

A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about a new startup
he was involved with. It sounded promising. But the next time I talked to
him, he said they'd decided to build their software on Windows NT, and had
just hired a very experienced NT developer to be their chief technical
officer. When I heard this, I thought, these guys are doomed. One, the CTO
couldn't be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer
he would have had to use NT voluntarily, multiple times, and I couldn't
imagine a great hacker doing that; and two, even if he was good, he'd have
a hard time hiring anyone good to work for him if the project had to be
built on NT.

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Python, eh?

jed
-- 
http://s88369986.onlinehome.us/freedomsight/

... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier