Posted by spf13 11/3/2025
I've seen this with React. You might have a great website working with some solid MVC framework + good'ol jQuery or equivalent, but no, the whole thing has to be rewritten from scratch to be an SPA in React, to "keep up".
The point of the article is that if you delegate this choice, the people to whom you delegate it will get it wrong.
If anything, maybe this says there is room for a Rust-like GC'd language.
[https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/takkle-com-s...]
then boom suddenly php, ruby & java are pragmatic choices in economic sense for business systems. same as c++ for hedge funds & video games etc.
Have they done in math in FTE salaries, times the estimated effort in days, mappend into money, and what is the expectation of ROI in that investment.
We do pick tools in good part based on how we feel about them (especially engineers who believe themselves beings of pure rationality, tbh), and I think that's in fact okay; how we feel doesn't come from nowhere, it's informed by decades of experience often acquired the hard way. But it's still a squishy metric that can only be trusted to a point, and being aware of how this sort of decision making occurs, in yourself and in others, is highly valuable IMO.
PS I've seen PHP destroy billions in value in my career. It and Brainfuck are the only 2 languages you should never use to make software for other people. Every other language has a core use it is good at. JS in the browser, Python for scripting, Java when you need good observability and 3rd party libraries, etc...
And similarly, "Python for scripting" (Instagram?)... It's the effectiveness you achieve with it that is perfect for many new projects, based on language itself (dynamism, introspectiveness, readability...) and rich standard library and ecosystem.
I'd say you are not looking objectively at language choices despite the evidence being there in plain sight to counter the claims you are making.
Ummm... No, I think it was about forcing Perl on engineers who had been using PHP.
Management does need to care to ensure they hire people who will make the right choices (which is a careful balancing act of investment vs returns) if they don't trust themselves to do it.
It got people to click the link to their think piece.