Note: The following post might be me having my own geeky midlife crisis. After all, I am turning 38 this year. So maybe all the young hipsters out there are making me a bit envious. But, maybe it's not a crisis, and maybe the grass is really greener on the other side...
I've been toying around with the idea of learning another programming language. Being interested has not driven me to commit to another language on an actual project though. I think for me it comes down to doing what I know because it's fast, or at least faster than starting from scratch with all the new syntax and tools. Being a hopeful, evening and weekend entrepreneur, usually I'm trying to put a minimum viable product together as fast as I can. Necessity seems to be my driving force.
I've been a .net developer since 2001. When it first came out, or shortly after I had to choose if I'd be a .net or Java Dev. After the decision was made I never really desired to be anything else. I'm not one of those developers who thinks Bill Gates is the anti-Christ, though Balmer doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. I have not jumped on the M$ hate bandwagon, and actually have come to really love Windows 7 (Windows 8 will not be my next OS though). I've never been much of a fan of the console. In fact I'm quite fond of IDEs. Well, I'm fond of Visual Studio, as it's been my main tool of choice for over a decade.
Rails interests me because it seems to have quite a community of really excited craftsman around it. They seem to care about doing things right. By right I mean, as the website says, optimized for developer happiness and sustainable productivity. Supposedly you can build a highly maintainable site very quick [if you know what you're doing].
These new thoughts started a little over a year ago. I'd started doing a lot more front end development and have come to almost enjoy JavaScript. Once I started treating it like a real language, I realized the power that is there. Now something is happening within and I don't believe I'm the only .net develops out there feeling this way. I want to learn something new but a few things stand in my way from pulling the trigger. One - I'm learning to tolerate the console, but I have to admit I'm still not a fan. I know many will not take me seriously after that statement, but i have to be honest. Two - Ruby, Rails and lots of the tools are built around the Unix console being the main tool of choice so it seems the Mac is becoming the new developer machine. Macs are freaking expensive and my current employer isn't going to foot the bill at this time. I could try Ubuntu on my windows machine, but getting it all setup, configured and taking the time to learn the new OS could take me a while. That same while I could be finishing my next MVP in a language I'm pretty good with.
Is it worth the hassle? Am I just being lazy or am I being practical? One thing I am considering seriously is Node.js and Sails.js - Something about an all js and HTML stack really has me intrigued, but how hard will it be with a windows machine? Your thoughts and advice is welcome...
I'll just leave this here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/03/why-ruby.html
Jeff Atwood of StackOverflow fame jumped from .NET to Ruby on Rails for his latest project. The linked post describes why.
I did rails on windows for a while. For the most part it works just as well as on mac. The windows terminal options certainly are more clunky. Occasionally you will encounter some gem that borks on windows, but that's rare. The biggest leap is probably more lack of ide integrated documentation; you have to get use google / overflow more.
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