Ask HN: Programming productivity vs. performance - opinions/links needed

4 pointshendricius2 comments

What is your call on programming productivity vs. performance? I am writing a thesis on that topic which should in the end suggest startups - to either a) go for high performance languages, or b) go for languages they are most productive with.

I need input from real hackers - looking forward to reading your opinions/checking out links you like.

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I think these days for web development its not really a question of productivity vs perf, since you can pretty much attach your app from whatever language into your load balancers / db clusters / caches etc, and you get solid, scalable performance (that's been my experience with python, ruby, and php at least). There's really a great degree of freedom to just choose whatever lang you and your team are most productive in and just go from there.

It's completely dependent on the requirements of the product you are building. If code performance is a requirement (or a known problem), than you should use a tool (ie, a language) that solves it.

For most web / mobile startups, this is usually not the case, and they opt for the language which they are most familiar with, easiest to hire for and allows them to iterate and pivot the fastest.

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