We’ve all seen it: junior devs dunking on an editor they’ve never touched, claiming one language is trash, or repeating a YouTuber’s hot take on why a framework is “the future” — without ever shipping anything with it.
Don’t get me wrong — it’s fine to have strong opinions. Honestly, we’ve got plenty ourselves (and if you ever catch us arguing about semicolons, just ignore us). It’s even fine to talk smack about a tool after actually working with it. But parroting someone else’s conclusions, without putting in the reps? That’s just empty noise.
Mastery Beats Tool Choice #
If you give me the option between:
- A developer who’s cracked at C and knows the entire standard library inside‑out, or
- Someone okay-ish at Rust but leaning entirely on its “safety” features,
I’m picking the first one every single time. Because when you truly understand the fundamentals, you can adapt to any tool.
Same with editors. People love to spark flamewars over Vim, Emacs, Helix, VS Code…
But whether you’re rocking :wq or hunting through a VS Code command palette, you can build a killer workflow in any of them. I’ve seen VS Code power-users outpace Vim wizards simply because they knew their environment inside-out.
R vs Python: The Data Science Civil War #
Remember when R was the go-to for data science? Now Python gets all the hype, thanks to Pandas, scikit-learn, and its massive ecosystem.
But here’s the thing — you can do almost anything in R that you can in Python. The real question is: do you know your stats? Do you understand the models, the tests, the limitations? A mediocre Python dev with the “better” library is still worse than a sharp R dev who knows their craft.
It’s the same story everywhere in engineering. Tools aren’t magical. Skill is.
Rust vs C++: The New Champion vs the Old King #
Rust gets praised to the heavens for its memory safety and modern tooling, and yeah — Cargo and the borrow checker are amazing. But C++ has been carrying the modern world for decades. Entire industries run on it.
If your argument for a language is purely “it’s safer” or “it has better syntax,” but you don’t fully grok how its features work under the hood… you’re letting the tool carry you. That’s not a great place to be as a dev.
Abstractions Are Fine — If You Understand Them #
Modern web dev loves a new abstraction layer every month. React, Solid, Svelte — all brilliant in their own ways, but under the hood, it’s still JavaScript doing clever DOM work.
If you don’t understand what’s happening underneath, you’re building on a tower of abstraction that you can’t debug when it shakes. And then criticizing other towers? That’s just silly.
The Seasoned Dev’s Attitude #
One thing you notice: experienced developers rarely waste time dunking on your stack. They might say, “Here’s why I’d use X instead” — or they’ll let you run with your choice so you can find the limitations yourself.
That’s the healthier approach:
- Learn a tool deeply.
- Understand why it works the way it does.
- Pick the right tool for the job — and be humble enough to admit when another one’s better.
Final Thought #
Framework wars and language superiority debates can be fun — but they’re not where great engineering happens.
It’s not the sword. It’s the swordsman.
Before you go telling the world “your tool sucks,” spend some time mastering it yourself.
You might be surprised how much you like it.