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Comment by UK-AL | Hacker News Reader

I think programmers these days focus too much on having whizz bang technologies.

90% of successful project implementation is culture, good practices and so forth.

I've seen well run cobol projects, and badly run projects using all the latest trends.

It doesn't really matter if your software is using Java, ruby or node.js. I can guarantee you from a business perspective, success does not rely on that. I much rather have well tested, well maintained Java Spring Code base, then a badly tested, unreadable clojure codebase.

The success of the story is that they probably went from a bad codebase to a good one. And you can in any language, node.js or not.

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I wish I could upvote this more than once.

Except maybe for the 4th paragraph. Using node.js instead of PHP cut my server costs to 20% of what it was before (simply because I can run the same thing on less number of cheaper servers). Lower cost means more profit and I count profit under "success from business perpective". ;)

Sure, but if you don't get that "90%" right first, your "20%" becomes irrelevant. Too many don't get the "90%" right.

Jerry Weinberg has an essay on fads in computer programming[1]. Basically, it's written such that you can swap in whatever today's hottest fad is, and the article still makes sense (it was originally written for Structured Programming, but OO Programing, Agile Development, Node.js, et al would fit well within it).

One of his conclusions is that the organizations that are likely to succeed with the latest whiz-bang technologies are also the ones who were most likely to succeed without them. Sure, what's new can be better, but it's hardly sufficient.

Based on my experience, I would agree, and so I think you're right. With the exception of this being specific to "programmers these days". I think our industry has always been plagued by this trend. It's just that now, with the internet, the stories have a longer reach.

[1] http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/06/beyond-agile...

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