If you were to ask what "the best programming language" is, you'll invariably get responses along the lines of "using the right tool for the job".
However, the notion of "the right tool for the job" is not so straightforward an idea, can we unpack this a bit?
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This requires a lot of nuance. There probably is a statistically correct "best tool" for optimization and performance. But there are so many other factors.
What languages do you and your team dominate. Whats the ecosystem like? Whats the budget and time constraint like?
Its a combination of using the right tech and the tech you and your team have mastery over. Of course this all has its caveats and what not as well. But the main takeaway is the most boring response of: It depends.
I think there is often an implicit association of an ecosystem with a tool. When someone says scala, they might be thinking about Akka and the concentration of distributed systems people around it. When someone says python, they might be thinking of machine learning libraries. So, I think "tool" is misleading because it seems to imply just the core language.
I tend to use this phrase when I describe my tech stack to emphasize that I'm not fixated on a specific framework.
Maybe I can best explain what I mean by that by first explaining what it means to me to use the wrong tool for the job.
Building entire ecommerce platforms with Wordpress, for example. Yes, there's plugins, and no, they're not nearly as well maintained, flexible or modern as Shopware. Wordpress is an amazing piece of software, don't get me wrong, there's a reason that a large part of the internet runs on Wordpress still, but it's not meant to be used as an ecommerce platform. I've also seen people using Moodle as a CMS. Works, but Wordpress or Drupal would've been a more sensible choice. Every library, framework, language and toolkit is meant to solve a certain, often very specific, set of problems. A tool is the wrong tool, if its core set of solved problems overlaps minimally with the set of problems you're trying to solve. "Solving a problem" is also by no means a boolean state, more of a spectrum. Some tools solve the same problems, but in a different quality. I often use the "hammer, screwdriver and nail" metaphor for this: You can sink a nail in a wall with a screwdriver, but the hammer works better (believe me, I tried), because it was designed to do that. Also, you can probably hammer in a screw, but the screwdriver does a much better job. If you need to fight the tool to get your problem solved, that's when you use the wrong tool.
What's the right tool, then? As per my set theory excursion above, it's the tool whose set of solved problems overlaps most with your set of problems to solve, in the best way.
Lovely! ...The best tools are the ones designed for the job...and the do that one job perfectly! No need of hacking! They just do the job
I will share this article bartwronski.com/2016/06/26/technic...
that talks about how to choose a technology.
Basically it resumes in:
Use boring technology that you know well the pros and cons. Maybe is not the best tool for the job, but if you can circumbent the known limitations you will be fine.
Use new technology in experiments and non critical systems if wanted. Apply it when you know their quirks and limitations and can be confident using it.
Do not rush for shining new things, specially for projects with deathlines.
Deathlines... aptly put. It's not likely to be a typo.
From a classic oreilly.com/library/view/death-mar...
At an alarming rate, companies continue to create death-march projects, repeatedly! What's worse is the amount of rational, intelligent people who sign up for a death-march projects whose schedules, estimations, budgets, and resources are so constrained or skewed that participants can hardly survive, much less succeed...
I think it comes down to playing to the strengths of the tools — but anybody who gets overly granular about this is misguided.
A lot of tools are in the same "class" of utility. Ruby probably is not the right tool for the job if you're writing an operating system. If you're creating a web app, it's likely not to matter whether you go with Ruby or Python — but if you're doing academic research it probably will matter. Not because Python is inherently better at that stuff, but it's just more the default accepted by that community. You're rowing upstream already if you choose something else just for the sake of it.
A lot of people can over-index on this. The right tool is often the one you are most comfortable with using. And when you're working on legacy systems, you're not necessarily helping by trying to use the best tool for the job instead of what's already in place.
Can you tell if a web app is made using Ruby or Python or PHP? If you can't tell it really doesn't matter!
I don't think "right tool for the team" should be intertwined with "right tool for the job". I would have an ordered list of tools for a given job, and then do a second pass to match the team's existing skills against that ordered list, rather than trying to juggle too many concerns at one time.
depending on the context, use the thing you know well enough to be productive at getting a given job or task done.
There could be better tools or languages, but if you don't know it, you need to decide if it's better to learn the better tool or make due with what you know. Constraints could dictate it either way depending on what they are.
That's just on an individual level though, but you scale it up to where the team has to make those considerations and determine what's best by the same factors.
As a software developer you're an expense to your employer. Implying the more productive you are the more valuable you are to your employer. The more valuable you are the more safe you are, and the more likely it is that you'll be promoted. Find the tool that makes you the most productive, without compromising code quality or security in any ways ...
This is an abstraction developers like to use to communicate complex ideas to people that require simpler terms - like management.
Ok joke aside, job often refers to a usecase, scenario or project and depending on that the tool might mean a library, Framework or whole tech stack.
If we break this down we come to the foundation of the domain with specific processes and users with functional and non functional requirements and a technological choice to realize these requirements in the context of the domain.
Phew.... I sound weird, let's stick to the tool and job definition
It means time spent/wasted on research. There will always be a set of most common usage scenarios for a particular feature of a language/framework/API and a collection of accompanying tools for that set. And then there's niche. And then you'll catch yourself wanting to use a particular tool that is not in the MVP set of tools, you'll assume from its docs that it will produce certain results you desire only to find out through practice it's not producing the outcome you expected.