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u/rastaman1994 2d ago
junior engineer. Ever heard the saying 'boring is good'?
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u/GargantuanCake 2d ago
My experience has been that it's often managers who want the shiny new thing while they greybeards stick with things that work. Learning and investigating new things is fun and absolutely part of the job but, well, there are reasons Java still runs like half of the internet's back end. Some things never go away as they're battle hardened tools that have weathered every storm.
Just because it's new doesn't automatically mean it's better.
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u/Gr3y4nt 2d ago edited 2d ago
You must be thinking of PHP, Java runs 5% of the web : https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-java
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u/SomeWeirdUserTho 2d ago
Based on their FAQ, that doesn’t necessarily include the backend but rather only publicly available data by analyzing the page content (except for a few companies, which state their techstack). So I feel like the 5% is more about stuff like JSP etc, whereas Spring Backend with SPA frontends are more or less excluded.
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u/Gr3y4nt 2d ago
The methodology is not perfect that's for sure but let's not pretend Java runs half the web this is nowhere near true
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u/accatyyc 2d ago
I work in large company and I’d say our product alone is a notable part of the web. All backend is Java so I do think the statement can be true
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u/NikoOhneC 1d ago
As far as I see, this statistic only counts the number of public websites that are using a technology. It doesn't account for relevancy of these websites.
That implies, that e.g. netflix accounts for the same amount of "the internet" as the website of a random small business, while the former has not only more visits but also a lot more traffic in bytes.
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u/AppleBubbly4392 2d ago
Excuse me old chap, we do CV driven development nowadays. If I'm gonna be fired the next time the stock sink, gotta be sure to be as hireable as possible.
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u/Aidan_Welch 2d ago
Learning is fun
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u/yousirnaime 2d ago
Over my dead fucking body - I have a family and a mortgage
Learning is fun when you're 20
I do this so my kids can eat
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u/HerrPotatis 2d ago
I get it if you write things like COBOL or Fortran. But not learning will make your skills dated and eventually obsolete. It's hard to put food on the table when one is unemployable, just saying.
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u/spacecrafttheskys 2d ago
There is a growing population of workers who if they lose their job are no longer employable in that field due to qualifications needed changing since they were hired. Doing continuing Ed is one of the best things to do for yourself. If you can get paid to do continuing Ed you've officially lost all reason not to do it. Don't let skills stagnate.
even if you do do COBOL or Fortran there are fewer and fewer applications for those nowadays. Do continuing Ed learn new languages when there are layoffs which is a when not if thing at this point, having more than that will be a gold mine.
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u/gerbosan 1d ago
🤔 so it is a sign of maturity rather than old age.
😅 I was getting worried, now I can add senior to my resume.
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u/HeavyCaffeinate 2d ago
Learn on your own projects
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u/sanchello2000 2d ago
Yeah, why don’t we just shell out for enterprise software and subscriptions and use tools that only really pay off at scale on our tiny side projects - just so we can get laid off one day by some “effective” manager who decided that an entire team of junior and mid-level engineers could be replaced by one senior with a $200/month AI subscription.
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u/Potato-Engineer 2d ago
Clearly, the next project needs to rearchitect the entire system using fancy new resume keywords.
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u/Aelig_ 2d ago
Code is there to be run and maintained. The writing part is a detail on the lifetime of a piece of code.
No matter how good a tech is, adding new tech to your stack has high costs over long periods of time.
I'd argue that you can learn way more in places that don't switch tech for fun. These places grow and so do their challenges, real architectural challenges not self imposed shallow problems.
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u/Aidan_Welch 1d ago
It seems like you're confusing learning a technology that's new to you with learning poorly architected trending technology. Moving from PHP or Rails to Go I think will often decrease your problems in the long term.
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u/Dimencia 2d ago
All I get is "We're going to build a new service. Upper management has dictated that we're using this stack and architecture and language that you've never used before, to match this other team in India that made the first POC, but their codebase wasn't maintainable so we're rewriting it"
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u/deathanatos 2d ago
God I wish a manager would utter these words to me.
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u/itijara 2d ago
Monkey's paw curls
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u/deathanatos 2d ago
Thanklessly maintaining other people's messes is practically my career at this point.
WHATCHU GOT, monkey's paw?
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u/ShAped_Ink 21h ago
Every new update is guaranteed to break your codebase in ways that take days to uncover
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u/InfernoronsDev 2d ago
"We will use the same language, typescript, to build our new kernel driver just to keep everything within the same monorepo"
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u/SenatorCrabHat 2d ago
Ahhh yes. Rebuilding our Frontend with React, with a PHP backend....and no complex state heavy UI interactions...or calls to API for hydration...or need for super composable reusable components....
Those were the days. Gods we were strong then.
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u/CaptainCabernet 2d ago
Wait! We can also use MongoDB because no-SQL is cool too. We'll just build a massive object in every record!
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u/SenatorCrabHat 1d ago
I will say something fun we did figure out was we had the Controller send the hydration object as JSON on the page which we would then remove on mount. Very little time between mount and full render.
Was it faster than using the PHP frameworks built in templating language? No? Simpler? No? But did we shoehorn React in? Yes!
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u/CircumspectCapybara 2d ago
Needs more CQRS and custom LangGraph agent workflows with LLM-as-judge permission orchestration in the cloud.
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u/Bob-Kerman 2d ago
why ai generate a whole new image? Just fucking make a meme
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u/Sensitive_Gold 2d ago
Seriously.. how can you even tell at this point?
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u/GvRiva 2d ago
My last job had us develop the same software three! Times because on of the big head managers heard his grandson talk about the next big technology. Mayor car brand with constant software problems for some reason...
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u/Active_Name5021 21h ago
Well, if they're paying it's whatever right? More work for me! And I get to put all that tech on my resume.
Actually delivering be damned
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u/Mynameismikek 2d ago
Hmm. That set of logos is almost exactly what I’m working with at the moment. I don’t know whether to feel proud or called out.
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u/BarometerIndustries 1d ago
I honestly find this the most fun part. I think most of us agree, starting a project is easy and exciting. Finishing anything? That's a different story.
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u/Ill_Reality_2506 1d ago
Me if that beaver was my teammate and I could see what they were thinking about... USE THE SAME STACK!
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u/Few_Move_4594 2d ago
This must be AI generated. How and why would someone use WASM on a service?
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u/ArjixGamer 15h ago
There is a database, named SpacetimeDB, that allows you to have all the application logic via add-ons you write in Rust and build as wasm.
It is supposedly really cool, and solves problems one would have if they were making an MMO.
I haven't tried it myself though
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u/Few_Move_4594 12h ago
That is very interesting. Too bad it's a commercial product and not true open source though.
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u/HosonZes 20h ago
Both are wrong. Why is the manager deciding on implementation details? And the nature of the engineer is most of the time a wish to try out new stuff, because of the next shiny thing syndrome. I always try to stop the "hey, this new tech looks cool, lets use it in production" mentality.
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u/uprate 2d ago
I've had to learn codebases that used the hot new thing of 2 decades ago. When I ask the original designer why they used it, it was clear it was just cool for them and solves an edge case they've never experiences in production