Recently a massive drama unfolded when the creator of Ruby on Rails decided to remove Typescript support from one of their packages. This move really pissed off a huge swath of Typescript developers, and there was a massive pushback. Some went far enough wanting to remove the creator himself from the repo and reinstate TS. However, the owner didn’t budge; he wrote several articles explaining the move and a callout against several influencers who may or may not have triggered the massive backlash and the resulting online harassment.

Both sides, the pro-TS and anti-TS crowd made solid arguments for their cases. Only time will tell if this move was beneficial or not.

Coming to the point, do users give a shit? The actual customers? Stakeholders, investors?

Nope!

And there lies the problem. We as developers have sorta unofficially been betrothed to languages/stacks/frameworks of our choice. In social media, one can always find people arguing over petty crap like React vs Vue, Go vs Rust, CSS vs Tailwind and what not. In the olden days, there were people fighting over Mac vs PC or Playstation vs X-box.

I’m not sure why the discourse is like this. One can only make educated assumptions.

Stop listening to influencers

I noticed a new generation of influencers who probably worked in some Fortune 500 company taking a massive dump on languages/stacks/frameworks they don’t like. They constantly deride some tech as old, slow, poorly made, a curse and what not. Most people subscribed to them are junior devs and are being raised to hate the tools which in all honesty, they probably don’t even use.

“Javascript you say, that’s the most abominable language of all times” Why don’t you create your own programming language thats runs perfectly on all browsers.

“React is garbage. Solid is new deal” The day your company starts using your cutting edge framework on their production, give me a call.

“Node is outdated, Bun is the future” Good luck convincing your manager to switch.

“PHP is dead” How come 60% of the web is still uses it?

You get the gist.

These new age influencers need to dial down their vitriol; instead show people the problems and ways to solve it. Show them use cases, where it works or where it doesn’t. Create paths to solving problems, instead of shitting on them.

Who knows? maybe its a pipe dream. Generating drama gets clicks and all. More content for the algorithm gods, but at what expense.

My 2-cents… This is boring af

There was a point in my life where I would get involved in such drama. I used to be all nerdy about the tech when talking to clients and investors on meetings, and they were like “hmm.. ok” and I felt dejected.

Looking from their point of view, it’s not that they disrespected me or my hard work. It’s what they hired me for. They were thinking in numbers and customer feedback. They were thinking in value. Higher the value, higher the moolah, and that’s all it mattered.

Getting into this mindset will help developers escape this quagmire.

There was one such entrepreneur who opened my eyes. This guy makes millions from his online businesses, and he used basic PHP, HTML, CSS and f*cking jQuery which everyone thinks is dead. His approach was simple. Think about the customer, the problem, they willingness to pay for the solution and solve it. Don’t think about the tech right away. Start small with basics and keeping growing. Tackle problems when they come.

We’re supposed to solve problems. Not become weird evangelists online.

I will end it right here. All these online nerd wars has become boring af.

Bye.