Language X is easy to switch to

I’ve heard “it’s easy to switch to a new language, it’s just a language, you just learn a new syntax”.

Well, I partially disagree. While you’ll may be able to learn the syntax fast, each language has its own particularities that you don’t just understand in a few days. Some languages have other best practices than others.

I believe that if you jump on writing code in a new language without understanding its philosophy, you’ll miss a lot of edge cases that will lead to undesired situations. Most probably no one will die, but time will be lost.

“We chose Node because we already had JavaScript developers, and it’s the same thing” – Yeah, server side optimization is the same thing. Same for concurrency. Or properly handling the file system.

“I took a look at Go and it’s trivial” – And a few months later you’ll end up tangled in your own work, refactoring each step.

While onboarding to the new project you have with that new language, I suggest  reading the docs, understanding the language’s best use, maybe right from the authors.

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