limits to preferences about ama HOT 1 CLOSED

Hi @mvolkmann!

Thanks for the question. It's a really good one.

I've recently been on a kick of trying to determine the objectivity vs subjectivity of things we do in software development. Identifying what is objectively better and what is subjective totally changes the conversation for stuff (like semicolons for example). It makes it easier to know what's important to fight for and what doesn't actually really matter (turns out, most things are subjective and don't actually matter).

So, me identifying what is purely preference and what is actually objectively better doesn't mean that I'm suggesting people do whatever they want in any file/project/etc. I'm a huge believer in tools like ESLint for keeping a standard for a codebase. I definitely feel a single codebase should share standard patterns, style (for the most part), etc.

From a company standpoint, I think that there's value in keeping technology similar throughout projects. This is one of the benefits of going all in on the web. Stuff like Ionic, React Native, Native Script, and Appcelerator do for mobile and electron does for desktop.

At the same time, I think that it's valuable to allow your employees to experiment with different technologies. For example, I became a better Angular developer when I toyed around with React.

I hope this answers your question! Thanks for asking!

from ama.