[dragonwriter]

> One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven.

It's not “purely fashion driven”, it's just that (1) as solutions radiate out from their point of origin understanding of the problem, how the solution addresses it, and what caveats the user should be aware of gets (on average) foggier, and definitely more unequally distributed, and (2) there are real network effects in software development where being popular genuinely makes things better, all other things being equal (from a business perspective, a technology for which you can get people that are proficient and comfortable is better than one you can't, other factors being equal.)

[ehnto]

> a technology for which you can get people that are proficient and comfortable is better than one you can't,

Hence why PHP is still the leading language for eCommerce, where fashion gives way to tight margins and hiring talent for a decade long lived piece of software is a major concern.

When cost is the driving factor for most decisions, and ROI is a very real and measured metric, convincing someome to rewrite their money making machine to keep up with the latest in tech is a hard sell.

[dragonwriter]

> Hence why PHP is still the leading language for eCommerce, where fashion gives way to tight margins and hiring talent for a decade long lived piece of software is a major concern.

I don't think the forces that resemble fashion are any less applicable to e-commerce.

> When cost is the driving factor for most decisions, and ROI is a very real and measured metric, convincing someome to rewrite their money making machine to keep up with the latest in tech is a hard sell.

Convincing people to rewrite systems without (and even often with) changing needs that the old system seems to brittle to accommodate is hard everywhere, even when ROI isn't clearly measurable; that's why so much established software in government (as well as other places) still runs on COBOL.

The shifting preferences in development that look like fashion are evident, even in those domains where there is lots of established software that is sticky, in greenfield development.

[ehnto]

> The shifting preferences in development that look like fashion are evident, even in those domains where there is lots of established software that is sticky, in greenfield development.

Definitely agree, greenfields projects are where you get an opportunity to suggest new technology.

What I find in eCommerce though is the people who make the decisions on this stuff move around from company to company like pollinating bees, and they always want what they had before, which is often WooCommerce. It's a matter of user interface and ecosystem. They don't care about the merits of the technology underneath, it's truly not a concern for them, what they want is to be able to load up the Yoast SEO plugin and check their copywriters work, or have their in house guy make popups with whatever popup maker they had last time.

I think that's why it's so hard to kill it off.

[ehnto]

I got some downvotes for this, but look at the numbers. I'm not saying it's the best language for eCommerce, but it is the workhorse. It's the old beige cash register in the corner bodega that's still the heart of thousands of businesses. These businesses don't have the margins to replace their Magento or WooCommerce shop, hence the need for pragmatism. If you're thinking about Shopify or AWS this or that you are already thinking about the wrong part of the industry.