I wonder where this graph gets it's data from. Scala sitting at 4.6 percent and python at 1.2 percent is not what I would expect, but my perception of the industry could be totally off.
They've apparently written their own web crawler that attempts to infer what language is used based on a bunch of, unspecified, heuristics. I wonder if at least some of the problem is that it is very easy to see if site uses PHP and much harder to see if a site uses a python backend and a such most python using sites just aren't being counted.
I think that we tend to have personal biases, depending on the context of our relationships and professional cultures.
I totally believe the graph, if only for things like WordPress, and a number of other infrastructure-level tools.
I know that the porn industry is still big on PHP. There was a post here, some time ago, that linked to a PornHub programmer, talking about their IT stack, and it was all PHP.
It's a boring workhorse. The "boring" part is attractive to IT pros.
The PHP thing is believable, I'm just still stuck on scala vs python based on my observations from working in the industry and being part of the hiring process for both of these languages. Perhaps it's because I work in B2B SAAS where these products aren't always necessarily exposed to the public internet.
What a throwback! I discovered these as a kid in the early days of the web. I remember the perl being a little too obtuse to grok as a preteen, but I figured out where I could change things at certain parts of the code to make things look a little differently. Those were magical years that inspired me to get into coding and problem solving as an adult. Thanks Matt.
Depends on the scale of users you expect for your project. Generally I like to keep oltp and olap tools in their lanes, but if < 100 people are going to be using it probably doesn't matter. I doubt duckdb has any sort of acid guarantees, so thats something to keep in mind.
Well, I was 13 and trying to learn html by piecing things together from "view source" and seeing what other people were doing on their page. We didn't have the benefit of stack overflow or what anyone today would consider a reasonable search engine. The dopamine rush was unimaginable at first, but quickly faded as i got pretty bored of static html. Once I found perl and cgi-bin, the dopamine was back, rinse and repeat over and over again for the last 25ish years. Those early years of the web were pretty magical for me and initiated a life long fascination of technology and problem solving.
I think there are many like us out there in the world, yours is almost exactly my life progression into working with code.
And I'd guess we are from very different parts of the world, in hindsight the initial web was truly magical, something that made people from many different cultures go along a similar path at the same time.
I always wondered why snowflake doesn't just install a control plane on customers own cloud resources a la databricks. Seems like they'd be able to mitigate a lot of liability that way.
I was a top 0.1% salesperson nationwide in car sales. I read a bunch of lean startup stuff, learned to make a minimum viable product, and then started selling to companies with 20-80 employees. I'm likable and good at selling, so I got 34 companies using this garbage I made. It's the worst nightmare ever to keep people motivated to use it, keep fixing things I made as a rookie developer, keep adding or saying no to features.
Overall the product isn't really needed, and sorta sucks too. If I was an typical developer trying to pitch a startup idea to businesses, it probably would have never got off the ground and nobody would have wasted any time. Maybe eventually the developer would have landed on an idea so good it had REAL PMF, and made that.
But no, instead I sold some garbage and now I'm stuck working on it. There is such a thing as being too good at sales. You don't want sales talking people into bad ideas.
Or maybe they're a bit disappointed it isn't that great, but who wants to onboard off back to hand made Excel sheets? Or spend time learning another tool. I've got very low churn so I guess it's all fine.
Hehe, reap what you sow :) But - you are not really stuck though. If you have managed to go from 0 to 34 customers before you can do it again. It is totally an option to drop that product and/or startup, and go with a better one (guided by your learnings). Up to you to decide what is the best way forward :)
Because there's a difference between selling a rough car you detail inside and out and sell for a good deal, versus selling a lemon.
Deep down I know the product isn't that well liked, and a lot of the renewals are based on my salesmanship. I know I have a chance at fixing the bugs, because I wrote everything, while someone else would be screwed IMO. It just wouldn't be fair to sell it to someone because I know they'd be making a mistake.
It sounds like you are underestimating pretty much this entire industry. Picking up codebases that are sketchy and new to us is just part of the job. Finding and fixing bugs is an exercise to get rolling, not an insurmountable challenge.
When people keep using software, it is because it solves a problem. They might not like the software but begrudgingly use it anyway because it solves that problem. So sure, pat yourself on the back for good salesmanship, but also realize that they keep using it because even if it is covered in warts, it still does the job.
While I agree professionals pick up codebases left behind by several iterations of developers, I think picking up a large PHP/Jquery PM tool written by a first time self taught via YouTube and stack overflow developer might be many peoples idea of a bad time.
It doesn't really solve a problem. Not really atleast. It's a little better than using 6 Excel sheets via a google drive honestly. The reason it got sold is because in theory it sounds a lot better than Google docs. But it's only a little better. And it has its own host of difficulties (can't modify anything for example.. don't even ask me to add a column or rearrange a table for you).
I know it's not great because if I get a company using it, but don't hand hold onboarding to an extreme level, they never even really get going with it.
When selling it, if I don't really lay it on thick and do a spectacular job, they don't buy.
The reason they don't quit once on it isn't that it solves a great problem or is much better than their previous solution (almost always just Excel sheets), but because switching back to their abandoned system is harder than the $300 a month is worth. So they just keep paying.
Also, I've contacted and pitched wayyy more than 34 companies. Many companies are/were smart enough to pass on it.
I'm not writing for a sob story or to talk up MY salesmanship for whatever reason, but I wanted to share my main takeaway from this project.
When doing lean startup and trying to get your first customers, don't think youve struck gold just because you had a great person schmooze a few people into using your MVP. It can be a false start just based on their persuasion. At this point I'd rather tone down salesmanship a lot and see if I can find a product that really strikes a cord with them instead. Less false starts that way IMO. I'd much rather have gotten 1-2 costumers only, not 34, and realized this isn't worth pursuing.
Well, I know several experienced software developers with good software ideas, but no clue how to sale them.
It sounds like bringing them and you together would basically be a guarantees success.
By the way; I am working as a self-employed developer and my favourite project is a software that has initially been written by a self-taught programmer who both started and ended his career with that software.
As far as I heard (he was already out when I joined) he got burned out and said that he never wanted to work with anything software related again.
He used PHP and jQuery.
I've mainly added new stuff instead of touching the old code, while only only refactoring the old stuff where necessary in very small increments.
Most other devs really hate to touch it, but I don't understand why.
Of course it would be better to replace it with a new version that has been built on top of a proper framework, but their management is too stubborn to understand that an incremental approach is the better way of handling this. So instead, they try to get a "complete understanding" of the project and try to create a completely new version in a "big bang" approach. This usually takes a few months or even a year until this new replacement project is considered a failure while I keep maintaining and cleaning up the old project.
It's been six years for now and even their most "optimistic" people currently say that the old software will be running for at least two more years.
Having built up a lot of knowledge over that time, I could easily create a new version in less than half a year (I actually think two months, but I'm tripling my estimation for safety), but that would make their management look bad (long story), so I don't get the green light to do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Two month sound too optimistic" you say?
Well it's an inbox, an outbox and one form with a few calculations in between.
I have created way more complex software than that in the last years.
If it was a real good idea, I'd argue it wouldn't be that hard to sell.
Reality would be that a combo of a good developer and a good salesperson would get into a similar situation that I got myself into, but with a better more manageable code base. Not the worst outcome in the world, that's basically most b2b saas technically.
imagine a software buying consultant. You could sell the service to your existing clients.
Long ago i made a few html websites for businesses then explained basic html and ftp to the owner. It was perfect except from other webdesign shops hammering my clients.
> Sales is mostly just lying to collect a commission check.
Depends on the type of sales. A pretty good indicator is how many times a customer makes a purchase from the same salesperson. If it's just one purchase (like ERP consulting) it could be grifty/etc like in this case. If they're buying from the same guy for years, there's often very different types of salespeople. I used to think all salespeople fit the sketchy used car salesman type, but after working with great salespeople I know better. This is a big blind spot for us techical/engineering types.
When you are working with the same sales people multiple times, it is an instance of treated prisoners dilemma. Used car salesman is just one time prisoners dilemma.
They’re not even lying, usually. They just don’t have the expertise to tell the customer exactly what they can’t have. That’s why you have sales people.
Some young people aren't sure what they want to do with life and school is a reasonable place to figure that out and hopefully pick up some practical skills/networking/life experience along the way.
