[jchw]

Back when Caddy first came out over 10 years ago, the fact that it was written in Go was just simply more notable. For Go, it also at least tells you the software is in a memory-safe programming language. Now neither of those things is really all that notable, for new software.

[PeterCorless]

I didn't even read the article, but I love the comments on the thread.

Yes. The implementation language of a system should not matter to people in the least. However, they are used as a form of prestige by developers and, sometimes, as a consumer warning label by practitioners.

"Ugh. This was written in <language-I-hate>."

"Ooo! This was written in <language-I-love>!"

[jchw]

There's certainly some aspect of that going on, but I think mainly it's just notable when you write something in a programming language that is relatively new.

Does it matter? In theory no, since you can write pretty much anything in pretty much any language. In practice... It's not quite that black and white. Some programming languages have better tooling than others; like, if a project is written in pure Go, it's going to be a shitload easier to cross compile than a C++ project in most cases. A memory-safe programming language like Go or Rust will tell you about the likely characteristics of the program: the bugs are not likely to be memory or stack corruption bugs since most of the code can't really do that. A GC'd language like Go or Java will tell you that the program will not be ideal for very low latency requirements, most likely. Some languages, like Python, are languages that many would consider easy to hack on, but on the other hand a program written in Python probably doesn't have the best performance characteristics, because CPython is not the fastest interpreter. The discipline that is encouraged by some software ecosystems will also play a role in the quality of software; let's be honest, everyone knows that you CAN write quality software in PHP, but the fact that it isn't easy certainly says something. There's nothing wrong with Erlang but you may need to learn about deploying BEAM in production before actually using Erlang software, since it has its own unique quirks.

And this is all predicated on the idea that nobody ever introduces a project as being "written in C." While it's definitely less common, you definitely do see projects that do this. Generally the programming language is more of a focus for projects that are earlier in their life and not as refined as finished products. I think one reason why it was less common in the past is because writing that something is written in C would just be weird. Of course it's written in C, why would anyone assume otherwise? It would be a lot more notable, at that point, if it wasn't.

I get why people look at this in a cynical way but I think the cynical outlook is only part of the story. In actuality, you do get some useful information sometimes out of knowing what language something is written in.

[PeterCorless]

I do know of a shop where an OSS database written in Java was chosen over one written in C++ because of the ability of the internal team to read the code, modify it, troubleshoot it, etc. That makes sense. It that was driven by pragmatics — maintainability. Not simply bias, or aesthetics or "rule of cool."