top | item 7394022

If you were building a startup today, what would you use?

31 points| akc | 12 years ago |docs.google.com

57 comments

order

alkonaut|12 years ago

Again with the assumption that "startup" is synonymous with "web/mobile app". What about thick clients/desktop apps/consoles etc?

If I were to start my career from scratch in 2014 I'd pick F#, and keep an eye out for Rust.

michaelochurch|12 years ago

Why F# over Haskell?

I feel like the near-reliance on Windows is the biggest issue for F#. Haskell fits the Unix environment a lot better.

gaoshan|12 years ago

So I guess the (currently third place) "Other" is mostly PHP? I know it's not cool but it still seems strange to leave that popular and frequently used platform out of the poll.

thaumaturgy|12 years ago

Hip developers are not allowed to acknowledge the existence of ... that language. Uttering its name is forbidden.

rmangi|12 years ago

Anyone who would start a new project from scratch in PHP hasn't been paying attention.

kodablah|12 years ago

I would assume Scala or Clojure

akc|12 years ago

added.

mindcrime|12 years ago

Man, Grails / Groovy never get any love from these poll authors! C'mon, Grails rocks people... :-)

Seriously, I switched all of our development from Java/Tapestry/etc. to Groovy/Grails a few years ago, and really couldn't be happier with the decision. Grails isn't flawless, but it mostly "just works" and makes my life SO much easier than before.

No, it isn't the "flavor of the day" like node.js or what-have-you, but it works, it stays out of the way, and gets the job done. And it lets me leverage the decade plus of experience doing Java that I previously experienced. What more could you ask for?

pkinsky|12 years ago

I chose Scala/Play framework for the same reasons. Java might be awful, but the JVM is a beast.

>Though my tip though for the long term replacement of javac is Scala. I'm very impressed with it! I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy. -James Strachan

lstamour|12 years ago

I'd also put my 2ยข out for JRuby. It's amazing how nice it can be to have Java libraries mixed in with Ruby on Rails, and your only penalty for it is a delayed startup cost (with potentially faster JIT to boot, and new Java 8 scripting performance to look forward to).

virtualwhys|12 years ago

I ditched Grails for Play in 2011, definitely prefer Scala over Groovy any day of the week.

TimisaGeek|12 years ago

+10000 - we've switched to Grails ~3 years ago, probably our best tech decision EVER.

wasd|12 years ago

I am most surprised by the number of people who want to use Go. It isn't that Go isn't a great piece of technology but I thought it would be really difficult to hire for and seems a bit overkill for an MVP.

lstamour|12 years ago

Depends. If what you need to build is actually a simple interface between database and front-end over an XML or JSON API, Go's not that much heavier than the alternatives, with the promise of more performance in the future and with less code than many other libraries require. Plus if you host on Google App Engine, it's free to start. Even the HTML templating has built-in context-aware output filtering for XSS prevention.

That said, Rails, or any language developers are more familiar with, can be faster. At that point, I'd argue even static HTML pages might be one of the fastest MVPs to put together...

qdog|12 years ago

I find your lack of C on the back end...disturbing.

mbesto|12 years ago

- If you don't know a web programming language, find the easiest one to learn (quicker to launch)

- If you do know programming languages, use the one you're best at (quicker to launch)

I'll refer to my previous argument for all of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6169120

akc|12 years ago

I for one didn't know about Digital Ocean before I put this survey out, and now I do, and am really grateful as a result.

gaoshan|12 years ago

Digital Ocean is great.... I've been using them for a bunch of stuff. Make for great dab/staging servers and low cost platforms.

emeraldd|12 years ago

For small stuff, their entry level 5$ a month droplet is perfect and pretty much beats anything else I've come across. Having SSD backed storage is nice too.

stusmall|12 years ago

I'm surprised that iOS is winning out as much as it is on the first native side to build.

MaysonL|12 years ago

I'm surprised that it isn't winning by a larger margin.

pjbrunet|12 years ago

Well, I voted twice on the same IP so maybe the results are meaningless. But considering HTML5 > native, iOS is more like 1/4th of the pie.

Objective-C is not a language option, but maybe because it's not a backend language? If iOS/Objective-C people voted for C++, they only have 3% now. So ~25% people want a fantasy iOS app but only 3% know native iOS = Objective-C?

16% of people think Javascript is a backend language? Hope those are votes for Node.js?

jsankey|12 years ago

I actually prefer Android as a user. But if I'm building native (instead of HTML5), it's because I want a polished UI, and that is easier to deliver on iOS where there are only a handful of devices to test against (in particular screen resolutions). Assuming the app goes well on iOS then I'd happily take on the extra effort of an Android version.

drivingmenuts|12 years ago

Having nearly finished my first real-world project in NodeJS/MongoDB, I gotta say, it's better than sliced bread.

Papa just found himself a brand new hammer. Now to go find some more nails.

herokusaki|12 years ago

Care to compare it with your previous experiences in webdev?

zequel|12 years ago

Disappointed Windows Azure isn't listed. Ignoring the anti-anything Microsoft crowd, it's a stable easy-to-use reasonably (at least competitive) priced platform.

ilaksh|12 years ago

Pretty big bias issue with the choice of options. Would like to see a tally of Other broken down on the home page of results.

omgitstom|12 years ago

Man, I would love to see this done yearly so we can examine the trends.

michaelochurch|12 years ago

I wouldn't limit myself to one language or framework, in reality.

Growing very fast? Python, with C for high-performance components. Python's got great libraries for everything, and hiring Python and C programmers wouldn't be hard because those languages have a lot of users.

Growing typically fast? Clojure. Drop to Java if needed for extremely high performance demands, or if I need to hire fast.

Growing at a leisurely pace? I'd be tempted to try Haskell (and possibly switch to Clojure). It's badass, it'd be fun to learn, and some of the smartest people I know are big fans of it. However, with the "leisurely pace" (R&D) I'd be tempted to hire people only as smart as I am and let them use whatever they wanted.