| "Turns out that the harsh truth is... Users couldn't care less about the programming language you used or how beautiful, clean, modular and maintainable your code is. In fact, they don't give a crap about it." This applies to some users, for sure, but not all. The few people on the planet who read, edit and write source code are also users. As a user, I do care about the choice of language and what the code looks like, for a number of reasons. It tells me about how the program works. It is often the best "documentation" provided. It makes a difference if I want to edit the code. It reveals something about the mind of the author. Does this person have an appreciation for the same qualities in software that I have. Is the person careless or careful. Verbose or succinct. Where possible,^1 I generally avoid program written in languages I myself do not use. All those Go programs posted to HN. I skip them all, no matter how good they sound. Python. NodeJS. Rust. The list goes on. I save quite a bit of disk space this way, avoiding large binaries and library installs. 1. I once commented on HN that I do not use programs written in Java and some JavaCard programmer got offended and said I was wrong because Java is in all sorts of devices, and JavaCard is running on SIM cards. That was not the point. The point was I am a user and if given the choice between a Java program and nothing, I will choose the later. The trick developers in "tech" use today is to remove user choice. (See, e.g., "dark patterns.") When choice is removed, then it does not matter if or what users would choose. Turns out there is at least one user who does care and he does give a crap. :) |