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lettergram

I always follow the rule - get it delivered fast, with the technology you know.

For me that:

* Web: Ruby (Rails), Python (Django), Golang (Revel)

* Desktop GUI: C++ (Qt)

* Embedded: C, C++

* Data Science(ish) Problems: Python

That probably covers 95% of my day job, consulting, and my startup - I deliver a ton of work. Rails my 90% go to for web, python is data science, C is performance. A notable mention is coffeescript/js and CSS for design, but with partials / templates in the web frameworks I don't really need things like React.

I think the problem you describe is a self created one. You don't need to use the latest tech, build micro services, upgrade them independently, and use frameworks that are well supported in what you know. Hasn't failed me yet.

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With respect, I think you are speaking from the position of someone who has known how to use this technology for so long, he has forgotten what it was like not to know it.

Take your "90% go to for web" stack. You'll need to know:

    * HTML
    * CSS
    * JS
    * Ruby
    * SQL (maybe)

And then the frameworks:

    * Rails
    * Bootstrap (or equivalent)
    * Vue (or equivalent)
    * Webpack (or equivalent)

And then the deployment:

    * Web server of choice
    * Database setup
    * Linux sysadmin
    * AWS

There was a front-end dev guide linked on the front page yesterday (https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap). Just...look at it. Count the pages. Even if you stipulate that you already know Rails, the rest of what you need to know is still a huge wall to climb.

And sure, by now, you have all that knowledge in your head, same as I do. (Probably better; I always hated web programming.) But asking somebody new to scale that wall just to join in with the supposedly open web? Seems a little much.

And I'm still pretty confident that I (with Anvil) would deploy a simple application faster than you (with Rails). Not because you're a bad developer, but because even with all your knowledge you're still navigating that stack - and deploying it, and debugging it, and editing it without autocomplete because no IDE can sensibly autocomplete a system with that many independent layers, and so on.

I agree with your premise, but not your conclusion. Its not that navigating the stack that introduces the slowdown, its that making your own choices as to what that stack will be leads to a very specific stack that not many are using. Because of that the tooling for that specific stack is most likely non-existant meaning that you have to context switch a lot to perform common tasks (now, if you're good at context switching, it might not be a problem). Its the same problem of working in a high level vs low level programming language. If you're trying to do something that the high level language was designed for, you'll have a good time, but if not, you might just be shit out of luck.

> * Vue (or equivalent)

> * Webpack (or equivalent)

Many web apps don't require a Javascript framework.

Nor Ruby and Rails

True, but most require some sort of backend. Many of those apps can still exist with little or no Javascript.

> And I'm still pretty confident that I (with Anvil) would deploy a simple application faster than you (with Rails).

Did you build the anvil.works site using your tool?

That was something that was pretty neat about bubble.is. Even though their offering is very very low code (plugins).

I completely agree with you. Use the tech you know, and learn new tech with time. Staying on the bleeding edge is fun but doesn't have the payoffs people think it does.

My stack is pretty much 100% JavaScript. I can do PHP, I can do Go, but I can build full-stack apps very quickly in JS.

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