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> a safer more modern language can accommodate less skilled practitioners. That’s really what it’s all about. SV is absolutely obsessed with hiring bad programmers, treating them like crap, so they don’t stick around, and somehow, magically, forcing them to write good code. We have this belief that if we just use the “right” tool (in this case, a particular programming language), all of our products will be good. Couple that, with the belief that we should be able to build our stuff on someone else’s code, for free, and you have a recipe for disaster. People like Linus Torvalds are living proof that it is quite possible to write amazing stuff, in old languages (he is a C guy), but people like that, are rare as hen’s teeth, and may be difficult for today’s tech managers to handle. There really is no substitute for running a good shop, hiring good people, training them well, treating them well, paying them well, and keeping them around for significant lengths of time. Also, we need to be able to hold ourselves accountable for the Quality of our own work -regardless of the tools we use. Torvalds is notorious for being a tough taskmaster, because he’s serious about the Quality of his work, and casts that onto others. “Treating people well” does not mean using kid gloves. It can mean expecting people to act like grown-ups, produce grown-up work, and not accepting less. I worked in an environment like that for decades. It was often quite stressful, but was also personally rewarding. It isn’t the tools that are broken; it’s the management culture, and no one wants to fix that. |