Programmers will write more efficient algorithms if their employers tell them to trade time-to-market for hardware cost. Previously, it was trade hardware cost for time-to-market.

"Programmers" don't make this decision, the product owner does.

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Pooge an hour ago | parent [-]

I disagree. Engineers choose the technical stack based on the specs.

With LLMs, it's faster to ship even in a more verbose language like Go or Rust.

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laughing_man an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The spec is the important part, though. If memory limitations are part of the spec, you're not going to choose a stack that will be too wasteful.

	▲	Pooge an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, but that doesn't determine the technical stack. It only narrows it down. You could just as well use C, C++, Rust or even Go depending on the device the program needs to run on. The device may have constraints as well but those are technical limitations and still not the responsibility of the product owner.

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retired 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have never worked for a company where the engineers choose the technical stack. It’s always the architect, the CTO or the mother company that decides what technology to choose. Could be a German/Dutch cultural thing though.

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armada651 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Who determines the specs?

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Pooge an hour ago | parent [-]

Specs are business requirements. Choosing a programming language is not a business requirement; it's a technical one.

	▲	shakna an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Platforms are often part of the business requirements. If you're working on SAP or Salesforce, the language decisions are already made for you. If you're integrating with an existing Electron runtime, then you'll be using something in the JS family, like it or not.
	▲	Someone 23 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Choosing a programming language is not a business requirement; it's a technical one. Not solely. The business will have reasons to stay on a mainstream language, for example because - it offers better guarantees for hiring maintainers in the future - it has a higher likelihood that security issues will be fixed rapidly for free - LLMs are better at maintaining code written in it
	▲	jpollock 20 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The programming language can have definite business impacts. It can impact hiring, salary costs (if the skill is rare), ramp-up costs (if it needs to be taught), etc. Even bus-factor comes into it.