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Comment by gburt | Hacker News Reader

This unfortunate obsession with new and shiny in the Valley is why we have to learn lessons like the benefits of relational databases over and over. Most of the new stuff isn't improved, it is simply different.

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I've now used several relational databases, Cassandra, couchbase, and dynamoDB and here's what I've learned: They all suck. Every one of them in their own special snowflake ways, but they all suck.

That's what differentiates good engineers from great engineers: they know what to avoid and when to avoid it.

few days ago had a guy tell me that "relational dbs are dying because google only uses non-relational dbs"

Relational dbs sure, but there are legitimate scale reasons to use a distributed key value store (for instance). There is no reason to be stuck with PHP today though. It's a very backward language when you compare to something with a modern type system/features (e.g. Go, Rust, Clojure, Java 8+, Scala...). Devs need to have a passion for learning technology. Not because it's the shiny new thing but because the new tech often _does_ offer benefit.

Often times you have no control over the technology stack you use because other factors drive your choices. I'm stuck developing in PHP because the tool we are using is written in PHP.

You often have to learn this stuff outside of your regular job. Once you know another stack then you can find another job using it. That's how you exert control over your career. Tying yourself to one company (or stack) is a slow death sentence.

EDIT: to those downvoting this... Do you disagree with me (i.e. you think it's a good career decision to stick with a single tech stack) or do you agree but dislike that it has to be this way? Genuinely curious because I didn't think what I said was controversial at all, just industry observation/common sense.

You're being downvoted because you are arguing the details and have missed the wider point being made.

I live and work outside the valley, and I know python and Java, dabbled in scala, rust and lately C# -- no one out here will give me a job on any of those languages because I have no professional experience with them, and some of them no one here is using yet

Have you looked at modern PHP though? I haven't looked extensively, and I'm not very familiar with type systems in general, but PHP 7 just might qualify as a modern type system (albeit optional) and since about 5.5 it's had pretty modern features like closures and traits. There's also hack-lang (Facebook's extended PHP.)

I have not and you're probably correct that it's not as bad as it used to be. That being said, this looks like a great case for learning new technologies/languages since the language you do know may change out from under you eventually anyway. For instance if a real type system shows up in PHP, prior experience with Haskell or Rust would allow a PHP developer to take advantage of it.

tl;dr: always be learning.

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