Heyo! Sloan, DEV Moderator and mascot. I'm back with another question submitted by a DEV community member. 🦥
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Today's question is:
Often I see developers ragging on a specific kind of technology in their posts. With titles like "PHP Is the Worst", "Java is Dead", etc. ... it feels so tribal and some folks just seem eager to rock the boat. What's up with these kind of posts?
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Top comments (8)
They probably feel frustrated, especially when forced by existing code or prior decisions by their customers or employers to use a technology that they never liked in the first place. Or they feel disappointed by a tech stack that used to fascinate them when it was all new. Java and PHP both date back to the 1990s, and so does JavaScript, which also gets a lot of criticism and a bad reputation outside of the dev.to community.
I think one part of it is people just naturally feel the need to justify their decisions. “Thing I picked can’t be bad, right?” But when many opinions it’s inevitable they will clash. And tribalism is a thing not only for developers. Just look at Linux space.
While I do agree with the other comments under this post, I think the underlying reason that people decide to rag on a specific technology is that these types of posts get a lot of attention (they certainly got yours!). An article titled
"5 changes I would like to see implemented in Java"won't draw much attention, but something like"Here's why Java is the **worst** language ever!"certainly will.Low-hanging fruit.
It’s easy to rag on the guy that’s out in front. PHP, for example, powers roughly 1/3 of the web, thanks to WordPress being close to the same. Are they the best option? That’s a different discussion. They’re easy targets because they're almost literally everywhere you look, and they've been entrenched so long that it's become fashionable to hate on them. Some of it is deserved, some of it is stuff that's not even an issue any more, but it's like a rite of passage as a junior to shit on the "cool kids".
Cpp and Ruby have bad rep from my proxies
After some time of working with different technologies, you establish opinons and impressions of them. It maybe that the wrong choice of tool, language or framework was used to do a project.
It's because most nerds don't watch and/or entertain sport.
Sport is the place to sublimate the disparaging thoughts towards others, it doesn't translate well to an online forum.
How can being a Rich