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by RandoHolmes 2120 days ago
> I'm betting on the tooling to stay backwards compatible or with minimal changes in the codebase

This is actually why I'm pretty bullish on things like RoR, Laravel, et al.

The sheer speed at which they go to a new version that breaks BC is actively making the web less secure. I've lost count of how many times I've found a new client with this software that's been working for years but suddenly broke, only to realize it's on an OS that's EOL, using a version of the framework that's EOL and a version of the language that's EOL. And now it's my job to bring it up to speed.

And typically the hardest part of that? The 3rd party dependencies that are either abandoned and don't support the newer versions of anything, or have moved onto Python 3 and no longer support Python 2.

It's why I vastly prefer something like asp.net core. I know in 5-10 years the code will probably just work with the latest version, and if there's an incompatibility, it's going to tend to be relatively small.
2 comments
lukeramsden 2120 days ago
> This is actually why I'm pretty bullish on things like RoR, Laravel, et al.

Do you mean bearish? I think you do as I was confused for about half of your comment before I realised

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RandoHolmes 2120 days ago
Sorry, you're correct. I meant bearish.

That's what I get for posting pre-coffee :(

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vbsteven 2120 days ago
The same reason why my default stack is still Java/Kotlin with Spring and Hibernate. A stable environment, stable runtime that is guaranteed to not change too much and has a culture of backwards compatibility.
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gonzo41 2120 days ago
How are you liking Java with all the versions that are dropping. Are you still on 8? Correto? Or are you keeping up? and do you see the value in the features that are dropping.
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vbsteven 2120 days ago
Java is moving a lot faster now with the new 6 month release cadence but you don't need to follow every release. Sticking to LTS releases is fine for projects that require longevity.

Some projects are still using 8 and will be until their EOL date. New projects start on the latest LTS release (11).

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john-shaffer 2120 days ago
java.time is really nice, so I use Java 11 (2018) on my servers. If not using java.time, Java 8 (2014) or later is fine. But I use Clojure, not raw Java. I haven't had any issues with upgrading. If a server works with 8, it works fine with 11 (in my experience).
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