HACKER Q&A
📣 kakadu

Which ecosystem/language would you choose for an ERP project in 2022?


Assuming you want to have an enterprise product with the complexity of SAP; would you go the Java way or perhaps something different?


  👤 austin-cheney Accepted Answer ✓
I would go with TypeScript plus Node.js, but that comes with some serious caveats. JavaScript always has been an extremely sloppy foot-gun kind of language, so you can make it do amazing things if you employ the proper safeguards on the proper foundation. That means a solid investment in training and infrastructure, not framework third party tool bullshit. I am building an OS on this, after all.

Except for arithmetic operations JavaScript has has reached execution performance parity with Java which therefore renders Java functionally obsolete, so there’s that.

By far the greatest limitations I have encountered with JavaScript (after doing everything right) is garbage collection on ultra high frequency operations and opinionated stupidity in the browser space. Don’t worry about the garbage collection until it becomes a provable problem for your application because by then you should have the resources to solve for those business concerns with binaries written in Rust, Zig, C, or whatever.

The browser stupidity impacts hiring maturity. Working in the browser, when done right, is no different than working in the file system because the backbone of everything is a big tree model, but most people are distracted by pretty colors and cannot see the forest for the trees.


👤 mradek
I’d use Go. It’s performant, not super duper difficult to understand, and has a solid std library and community.

I’ve used Node before but I’m sure you’ll have some number crunching and background jobs and what not. You could use Go to build all these things out and go far before you use some specific technology for it. You don’t need to install half the internet worth of dependencies to do basic things.


👤 mgl
Java, for security, performance and global talent

👤 readonthegoapp
wonder if Kotlin is ready for prime time...