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Comment by Pharaoh2 | Hacker News Reader

"I had never seriously used Python before joining Distelli, so there was a bit of a learning curve"

That was your problem, you just made a huge mistake and depending on how big your python code base was, you have now alienated most of your developers by moving to a language they are not already comfortable with.

Do your customers already have lua installed on their servers or are you bundling it now? You could have just a easily bundled a newer python interpreter. Lua is a nice scripting language, if you want to embed it into another app or to create a plugin system. It's not a nice general purpose scripting language, mostly because of the vast pypi repo.

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How is this alienating anyone? This is a command line tool. The end users are suddenly using a different language as a result. Their install process was streamlined and system dependencies were removed by including it in the install package.

The same thing could have been achieved within Python, but from an end user perspective I'm guessing this is an improvement for most of their customers.

It's alienating Distelli developers. The reason cited for the move is totally unacceptable in terms of the new skillset that their developers will need to acquire to continue development of the tool.

The cost of effort their developers will have to put in to be as effective as a LUA developer as they were as a python developer is really not worth this move. There are more to moving to a different platform/language than just the end users.

The end users are the ones that keep the lights on though. It sounds a lot like that Python was more and more of an anchor around the team, and the costs of migration were smaller than the costs of the other options. Yes, some developers were probably upset that they couldn't use their preferred language anymore. However, it sounds like because they're now using a language designed to be embedded, they can focus a lot more on solving problems than fighting with a language that has a lot more platform-specific behavior.

They only have a few developers, so it's really not a big deal. I think they only have 2 or 3, including the CEO who, obviously, has a lot of other things to do than write code.

Being as the size of the team is so dependent on a small number of high performers, I don't think it's unusual that they picked a language one of the main people in the company is extremely fluent in.

I've worked with Brian before and he is a beast. I don't know if 10x engineers exist, but if they do I would certainly consider him one.

Describing him as a 10x developer makes me even more skeptical of the decision to switch. Developers who deliver 10x as many features inherently do so at the cost of maintainability.

> Developers who deliver 10x as many features inherently do so at the cost of maintainability

I don't think what you say is completely true. People who are more experienced tend to be able to produce features much more quickly than those who are junior, just because they've already run into issues before so can anticipate them or solve them more quickly. If anything I would argue people like that actually write code more quickly that is more maintainable.

I don't know if he can ship 10x as many features; I didn't think term 10x engineer was used literally. I just know I've worked with quite a number of people and he is one of the best developers I know.

> he is one of the best developers I know

But then, we'd need to know how good your assessment skill/method is. Maybe you misjudge all the developers you work with? What feedback do you get?

@rifung - Thanks for the kind words.

@Chris2048 - Distelli is hiring. If you want to make your own assessment of my skill, then join us :).

"It's alienating Distelli developers."

Are you in a position to speak for Distelli developers?

"The cost of effort their developers will have to put in to be as effective as a LUA developer as they were as a python developer is really not worth this move."

I suppose this could be true in a poisonous environment where scheduling does not accommodate the need to learn a new skillset.

Unless you are familiar with the employer this is an incredibly hostile presumption. I.E. I would not work for such an employer nor would I want to be their customer

What does accommodating for a new skillset make a difference to the cost?

There will still be a minimum effort (e.g. in hours) that cannot be reduced by the nature of the employer. A dev will still have to put in the hours to learn a new language.

It seems the cost being described here is cost to the employer, not to the developer.

I use Lua as a general use language and I'm incredibly satisfied. It's an amazing language.

I also need to mention that Lua is the easiest language I've ever encountered, so any competent developer can learn it quickly, it's not alienating anyone.

Given that, I agree that LuaRocks isn't so vast as other languages' repositories and this can be a drawback of using Lua. But why again are you judging a language by it's package manager? If it's a good language wouldn't it be better to suggest more people to write packages instead of suggesting people not to use it?

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