The software ecosystem isn't dry

http://blog.alexrohde.com/archives/555

12 10 9 years ago

blog.alexrohde.com

tluyben2• 9 years ago

Exactly. But DRY does not give you fast github stars nor makes your work sound significantly interesting (I used a perfectly fine but boring 15 year old lib versus I rolled my own). To the Mongo point; investors often want to hear you rolled your own as well. So it will not change soon.

banku_brougham• 9 years ago

Welll, yes I think the case is proven for MongoDB and the like, but is the author beating up on the easy ones?

Some examples that come to mind:

- Postgres. MySQL is great but was eventually obtained by Oracle with a questionable open source future. I think they both originated long ago and evolved in parallel. I wish author would weigh in on which should not have been developed.

- Julia is a new dynamic language that intends to perform with speeds like C. But shouldn't we stick with python because that is the current standard? Wait though, the author says Python is just the same as javascript, ruby, and PHP. PHP was first, so I guess I should be doing my data science in PHP?

I think languages and ecosystems are more analagous to companies/enterprises. They evolve, arise, and die out. Some succeed.

alexandercrohde4• 9 years ago

[Author] I'll weigh in-

MySql, Postgresql [and the other major players] should all leverage the same standardized syntax (they're close, but not drop-in replacements). In this case when one gets acquired the switching cost is 0. In fact, if they follow the same query contract you could database-dump from one to the other.

Which one shouldn't have existed? Whichiver came second, I suppose. I don't understand why the authors between the two wouldn't cooperate and build one open-source system and fork it if it got acquired.

meitham• 9 years ago

"Nobody seems to admit it, but Php, Ruby, Python, and Javascript are the same language"!!!

That's a big claim and I bet the author doesn't know any of these languages.

alexandercrohde4• 9 years ago

I'm the author, I know all of them. Php, Javascript, and Python the best. Php well enough to have read add patched the source code. If you'd like to explain what you think some fundamental differences are between them I'm all ears.

For any line of python, there's a line or two of PHP to accomplish the same thing (same with javascript).

However you cannot say this for Scala vs Java for example.

babyrainbow3• 9 years ago

For any line of python, there's a line or two of PHP to accomplish the same thing (same with javascript).

Python decorators? What is the counterpart of that in Php?

The software ecosystem isn't dry

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