Let’s play a thought exercise. Imagine your development toolchain is like a semantic version number. Small features that incrementally improve your situation are like minor updates. They don’t cause any large shifts in thinking or process. Major updates are big, new concepts, quantum jumps in theory or practice.
I am not talking about the political, social, or financial aspects of a toolchain. For example, hiring is a complex beast entirely in its own category. The criteria for choosing a tool when hiring a few hundred offshore developers is very different than the criteria for hiring for a team of three senior developers. I’ll leave those aspects alone.
What are some examples of these value changes I’ve noticed in my development?
Minor Benefits
Perl - PHP - Python - Ruby
Switching from Perl to PHP for me was a minor change. I was able to carry over almost all my skills, and for the most part, the differences were mostly syntactic. Later, when I started using Python, most of my experience from Perl and PHP was still useful. The libraries had different names, and a few concepts were different, but on the whole, all three were in a same class of productivity for me.
More recently, on taking over a small Ruby codebase (scripts, not Rails), I again found much of my previous experience was still valuable. I can almost guess what things will be called or how they should be used. I still have to look up library names and keywords, but on the whole, the languages all provide very similar workflows. I suspect all four are in the same class of productivity, with some minor differences here and there. These days I put effort only into maintaining familiarity with one of these languages, since I am confident I could quickly relearn any of the other three on demand.
Java - VB.NET - CSharp
Moving between Java, VB.NET, and C# feel similarly minor in tangible productivity. For the most part, all the expectations and experience carries between the three. Obviously the tools are different, and there are a number of gotchas, but nothing changed my productivity in any major way. I doubt any of those three have any one killer feature that cannot be had in the other.
Major Benefits
Automated Testing
Switching from “run it and see” testing to automated unit and integration testing was a major change with large productivity benefits. All my experience to date was still useful, but I needed a whole new set of skills to be able to apply the techniques. Tools like dependency injection, mocking, TDD, and continuous integration enabled me to build and revive much larger systems. Automated testing is a skill that applies well to every language I’ve worked in, with benefits that grow increasingly valuable with more complex systems. I don’t always automated test, but it is an invaluable tool for certain classes of problems.
REPL Development (moving from Python/Ruby to Clojure)
Repl based development with live hot patching was another major change. It required a new way of thinking about programming, and with it came an instantaneous feedback loop. Much like unit testing, it was an entirely new skill, but opened up a very fast method of building up a system from small parts. Additionally, it allowed me to rapidly progress in my skills, because I could instantly see live feedback from my code, without needing to write a whole test just to execute the code.
Powerful Static Typing (moving from C# to F#)
Moving from a typical static typed language to one with algebraic data types has been a major change, with major productivity benefits. I have noticed entire classes of defects disappearing. Additionally, because of the better compiler errors, the resulting codebases are much easier to refactor, which means a faster reaction to a changing domain.
