|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
|
title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - A Language Is Much More Than A Language"
|
|
|
|
|
date = 2019-06-24
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[taxonomies]
|
|
|
|
|
tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "languages", "community", "ecosystem"]
|
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Picking a programming language is much more than just picking the words that
|
|
|
|
|
will generate a code. They come with a community, a leadership, an ecosystem
|
|
|
|
|
and a thread the binds them all together.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<!-- more -->
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Programming languages, in essence, are simply a bunch of keywords that make
|
|
|
|
|
things "go". But besides those keywords, they also bring their community, the
|
|
|
|
|
way the leaders deal with the community, the tools created by the leaders or
|
|
|
|
|
community to deal with the minutiae of creating a system, the way those tools
|
|
|
|
|
interact with each other.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
While a language may have a simple syntax, it may be that the ones controlling
|
|
|
|
|
the language actually don't give two shits -- if you pardon my French -- to
|
|
|
|
|
the community. They focus on solving _their_ problems, not the community
|
|
|
|
|
problems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Or maybe the community has duplicate tools -- which is not a problem -- but
|
|
|
|
|
that developers of each tool don't talk to each other. Or worse: They simply
|
|
|
|
|
refuse to look what other tools are doing, which could be used to improve
|
|
|
|
|
their own.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And maybe that third language is not as simple as others, but the leadership
|
|
|
|
|
is always discussing things with the community, being transparent on their
|
|
|
|
|
decision, allowing the community to discuss the future of the language and
|
|
|
|
|
even different groups building tools decided to merge efforts to give the
|
|
|
|
|
community better tools.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
That's why you can't "pick" a language by its syntax alone. That's only the
|
|
|
|
|
surface of what the whole of a language encapsulates and if you ignore the
|
|
|
|
|
other elements in it, you may find yourself with a cute language in a
|
|
|
|
|
community that is always fighting and never going forward.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/crash-it", prev_chapter_title="It's Better To Let The Application Crash Than Do Nothing") }}
|
