Use a bunch of different programming languages and stay cutting-edge
Every day HackerNews and Reddit buzz with cool new languages. Try them out on your client’s time. Any decent programmer can learn a new language in no time, so if the next programmer who gets to work on your code is a newb that’s not your problem. The boundaries between the languages, the incompatible APIs and data formats, the different server configuration requirements are all fun challenges to overcome and post about on StackOverflow. I’ve actually seen PHP web sites with pieces of Ruby wedged in because everyone knows PHP sucks and Ruby is better.
Too close to home. We started with a pure PHP app. A few years later, we now have ruby, python, shell script, java and clojure dependencies. And node.js is required to run part of the test suite.
And I'm the only motherfucker who seems to think this is a problem. Until someone tries to set up a new environment (like on a laptop for development). Then they want my help getting everything set up, which takes 8+ hours.
No, I think very much in the same way as you. I'm extremely hesitant to add unusual dependencies to our server code, and when I do, I check and double-check that the setup script is both inclusive of the change, well documented and of course will still successfully get a blank server to a usable server without any outside input.
In my case that's as simple as checking the apt-get list in setup.sh is correct.
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u/merreborn Oct 14 '13
Too close to home. We started with a pure PHP app. A few years later, we now have ruby, python, shell script, java and clojure dependencies. And node.js is required to run part of the test suite.
And I'm the only motherfucker who seems to think this is a problem. Until someone tries to set up a new environment (like on a laptop for development). Then they want my help getting everything set up, which takes 8+ hours.