If you can justify with good reasons why you absolutely need this other tool then that's fair game - hence the data science example where I allow for specialists to use specialized languages for specialized tasks.
I'm talking about general software development and web dev in particular. There's a trend where you'll see one org has or web app using .net ad react, another using next.js, another using Java and Vue, one djnago and htmx, and so on.
And there is literally no reason for any of these choices, they're all fairly basic web applications that could have all been made in literally any half decent web stack. So whether the devs who made these choices knew or not, they made them based on preference not any kind of reason or need, they're all nails and any hammer would have done the job just fine.
>> And there is literally no reason for any of these choices
I'm a manager now but definitely held a variation on this "people are idiots" view when an IC and younger. Question: are all your coworkers idiots? No? then why would all the work done before you be the product of idiots?
I found it really valuable to approach scenarios where the initial response is "how could this possibly happen?" as a cultural anthropology question. It turns out there were many rational decisions made, most that I would have gone along with that brought us to what we see today. My coworkers are actually really good, some of them who manifested what we see today are amazing. Many are crafting code, making thousands of microdecisions without perfect information or 100% clarity across a large organization, reacting to changing markets and directions, client needs, shifting priorities, executive decisions, technology changes... the list goes on.
This is all my way of saying there might be many reasons for any of these choices, and you'll help your own cause - and happinness - if you step back from your zealotry and take an empathetic approach that's less binary.
Some of my coworkers are awesome. Super talented, super smart people.
But most developers are pretty bad. I see a lot of developers who hardly do any work at all, and many who do lots of work but it's all trash. Buggy, overcomplicated, untested, dumb pointless decisions.
Like my current project. Two guys started it - .NET backend, React frontend. Sure, fine. But let's use Azure functions for the backend instead of a regular web api. What. We asked them why, no reason. And their whole codebase was trash, I've deleted about 90% of the code that they had written and I'll delete the rest too.
I've also been in a team that had the problem I highlighted in the OP. 20 different apps, 10 different JS frameworks etc. Speaking as someone who worked on these apps, there was absolutely no reason to choose one JS framework over another. I could have made them all in React no problem, they're just websites, not much more than glorified PDFs. How you generate the html is irrelevant. And the code was mostly trash. Overcomplicated, buggy, untested etc.
I did struggle with this early in my career - am I just a narcissist? Everywhere I turn the code is just trash, maybe I'm the problem? But now I've worked with people who do good work. I've seen my own ideas work in practice. I know for a fact my judgement is good.
In university I was the one who helped everyone else. I was always ahead, while my peers could hardly keep up. When we graduated a lot of them would have struggled to solve fizzbuzz in 20 minutes, yet we all have the same degree. No wonder there's so much trash code around.
I'm talking about general software development and web dev in particular. There's a trend where you'll see one org has or web app using .net ad react, another using next.js, another using Java and Vue, one djnago and htmx, and so on.
And there is literally no reason for any of these choices, they're all fairly basic web applications that could have all been made in literally any half decent web stack. So whether the devs who made these choices knew or not, they made them based on preference not any kind of reason or need, they're all nails and any hammer would have done the job just fine.