Versatile software engineer with a background in .NET consulting and CMS development. Working on regaining my embedded development skills to get more involved with IoT opportunities.
I think there's no magical trick, it's the sum of all your experiences as a developer which guides your decisions. I have had to learn the hard way on this very issue. Fortunately, I had an architect at a previous job who suspicious of all new technologies (iirc he had a very successful startup and framework hype led to a major refactoring which brought the company down), and it really pissed me off at first when he told me that he didn't want any of this "crap" in our codebase. We both definitely could have communicated more neutrally on the topic, but in the end, he was right. Many of the libraries I wanted to use are no longer maintained. Sometimes I had absolutely no reason to pull in a tool, it was just shiny. I think NPM has made us all a lot more aware of dependency hell, although I don't think it's causing us to question our actions as much as it should.
Nowadays, I just pick things up that are intuitive to me. I really like functional programming, it seems very logical and it just clicks with my brain. It took me several years to get to he point where it licked; at first I was doing it because a lot of programmers I respected were dong it, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. Eventually, I realized that I had slowly picked up enough over time that I was naturally coding according to FP principles without even having to think about it. Therefore, a lot of technologies that adapt FP concepts click with me and I am drawn to them.
While there are realistic questions that need to be considered with new technologies (the community aspect you mentioned probably the biggest one), you also have to remember to f*** all the haters. There's always going to be someone out there on the Internet waiting for a chance to crap all over your preferred technology. If it works for you, it works and that's all the evidence you need. I can't blame them for doing so, I have to admit that sometimes being a judgmental snob can feel pretty self-satisfying in the moment. At these moments, I have to jump back to my experiences with these individuals over the years and remember to keep an open mind. Not everyone does things the way I prefer them to be done, yet the sun still rises every morning and the Earth keeps spinning.
100% agree with you Scott, well said! Experience is a huge factor in this because I learned a lot of these principles and the ones you mentioned from dealing with problems in past codebases.
And yeah, ignore the haters and definitely don't be one of them. Use what feels best to you and respect others' decisions.
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I think there's no magical trick, it's the sum of all your experiences as a developer which guides your decisions. I have had to learn the hard way on this very issue. Fortunately, I had an architect at a previous job who suspicious of all new technologies (iirc he had a very successful startup and framework hype led to a major refactoring which brought the company down), and it really pissed me off at first when he told me that he didn't want any of this "crap" in our codebase. We both definitely could have communicated more neutrally on the topic, but in the end, he was right. Many of the libraries I wanted to use are no longer maintained. Sometimes I had absolutely no reason to pull in a tool, it was just shiny. I think NPM has made us all a lot more aware of dependency hell, although I don't think it's causing us to question our actions as much as it should.
Nowadays, I just pick things up that are intuitive to me. I really like functional programming, it seems very logical and it just clicks with my brain. It took me several years to get to he point where it licked; at first I was doing it because a lot of programmers I respected were dong it, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. Eventually, I realized that I had slowly picked up enough over time that I was naturally coding according to FP principles without even having to think about it. Therefore, a lot of technologies that adapt FP concepts click with me and I am drawn to them.
While there are realistic questions that need to be considered with new technologies (the community aspect you mentioned probably the biggest one), you also have to remember to f*** all the haters. There's always going to be someone out there on the Internet waiting for a chance to crap all over your preferred technology. If it works for you, it works and that's all the evidence you need. I can't blame them for doing so, I have to admit that sometimes being a judgmental snob can feel pretty self-satisfying in the moment. At these moments, I have to jump back to my experiences with these individuals over the years and remember to keep an open mind. Not everyone does things the way I prefer them to be done, yet the sun still rises every morning and the Earth keeps spinning.
100% agree with you Scott, well said! Experience is a huge factor in this because I learned a lot of these principles and the ones you mentioned from dealing with problems in past codebases.
And yeah, ignore the haters and definitely don't be one of them. Use what feels best to you and respect others' decisions.