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+++
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title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - A Language Is Much More Than A Language"
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date = 2019-06-24
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "languages", "community", "ecosystem"]
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+++
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Picking a programming language is much more than just picking the words that
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will generate a code. They come with a community, a leadership, an ecosystem
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and a thread the binds them all together.
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<!-- more -->
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Programming languages, in essence, are simply a bunch of keywords that make
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things "go". But besides those keywords, they also bring their community, the
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way the leaders deal with the community, the tools created by the leaders or
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community to deal with the minutiae of creating a system, the way those tools
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interact with each other.
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While a language may have a simple syntax, it may be that the ones controlling
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the language actually don't give two shits -- if you pardon my French -- to
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the community. They focus on solving _their_ problems, not the community
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problems.
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Or maybe the community has duplicate tools -- which is not a problem -- but
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that developers of each tool don't talk to each other. Or worse: They simply
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refuse to look what other tools are doing, which could be used to improve
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their own.
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And maybe that third language is not as simple as others, but the leadership
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is always discussing things with the community, being transparent on their
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decision, allowing the community to discuss the future of the language and
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even different groups building tools decided to merge efforts to give the
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community better tools.
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That's why you can't "pick" a language by its syntax alone. That's only the
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surface of what the whole of a language encapsulates and if you ignore the
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other elements in it, you may find yourself with a cute language in a
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community that is always fighting and never going forward.
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{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/data-types", prev_chapter_title="Types Say What You Data Is") }}
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