Do people care about the language used to develop new products?

Question

More and more I see posts that look like this: &ldquo;, written in &ldquo; Do you people actually care about the language in which any product is written? Shouldn&rsquo;t be the product all that matter?

__d · Accepted Answer

Absolutely.When I'm evaluating a product, the language it's written in gives me some insight into what areas I need to investigate further, what questions to ask the vendor, etc.So, if something's written with, say PERL, I'm going to be concerned about maintenance and reliability. If it's written in Python, I'm going to drill into the runtime performance and reliability more. If it's in C++, I might be looking at their development velocity.Everything's a tradeoff, and so long as those tradeoffs are addressed then it's fine. The language just gives me a better idea about where to delve more attentively.

PaulHoule · Answer

If it is an open source project I will modify then it matters a great deal. (E.g. looking at static site generators I like Hugo but something Python based would let me incorporate a lot of code that already exists.)

ozzythecat · Answer

As a technical leader, I view this in terms of costs. If most of my teams know how to write, build, and deploy in X, I prefer that language over Y. If X is tedious to write, debug, or someone has to become a ninja in building and deploying, perhaps X is less attractive.
And of course, we also must consider if the language is a good candidate for specific problem being solved.
We wrote mobile logic in C++, primarily so we could easily port it between iOS and a different Linux device.

nnurmanov · Answer

The short answer is no. Users do not care about programming language or the underlying tech you chose. All the care are their pains your product solves.On MVP stage you can use whatever cheapest options you have: e.g. low/no code tools, manual updates. The tech matters at the scaling stage, here you have to select the tech that proven to scale and for which you can (relatively) easily find engineers.

sodality2 · Answer

Yes. For example, when looking at selfhosted apps, if I see that it's written in a compiled, memory-efficient language, then I will evaluate it. If it's in Python, Node.js, etc, I won't. Simply because of the hardware restraints my server is on.

dpeck · Answer

No, no one cares generally, but people who are involved or heavily invested in an ecosystem may be interested in new libraries/tools in that ecosystem.

detaro · Answer

the audience here is not just or even predominantly "users looking for products"

bradknowles · Answer

Well, if it's not written in English, it's going to be hard for me to do anything with it.So, yes -- I care.

Do people care about the language used to develop new products?

More and more I see posts that look like this: “, written in “ Do you people actually care about the language in which any product is written? Shouldn’t be the product all that matter?

If it is an open source project I will modify then it matters a great deal. (E.g. looking at static site generators I like Hugo but something Python based would let me incorporate a lot of code that already exists.)

Yes. For example, when looking at selfhosted apps, if I see that it's written in a compiled, memory-efficient language, then I will evaluate it. If it's in Python, Node.js, etc, I won't. Simply because of the hardware restraints my server is on.

No, no one cares generally, but people who are involved or heavily invested in an ecosystem may be interested in new libraries/tools in that ecosystem.

the audience here is not just or even predominantly "users looking for products"

Well, if it's not written in English, it's going to be hard for me to do anything with it.
So, yes -- I care.