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Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

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Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#21

Post by Jemm »

Agreed.

You should know that in the past when OOP was not common, we had to work a little harder doing things like managing our own memory or building a LAMP server to publish our web pages.

There was a thriving market for language and UI add ons. The result was that each company had their own internal dev tools and recruiting people outside of the company who had experience with those tools was nearly impossible.

All that said, we were at a point where entry to programming was easy (think Visual Basic in the 90s). The quality generally went down as everyone was pushing their "first project" as if it was a polished product. Finding actual good programs on PC is close to the situation on mobile where most of the apps are trash.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#22

Post by golergka »

I would argue with notion that this complexity is unnecessary.

But most importantly — if it really is, as you say, you can profit of that. Open a consultancy, and solve client's problems without using these over-engineered solutions. If your competition truly wastes a lot of time, then you would be able to solve the same problems faster and in a more effective manner.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#23

Post by baremetal »

xpe wrote: post #17
xpe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what degree is this valid logic? Under what contexts does “reversion to the mean” apply? Over what time frame? The “mean” implies one dimension. What quantity are you referring to?

From Wolfram Math World > Reversion to the mean, also called regression to the mean, is the statistical phenomenon stating that the greater the deviation of a random variate from its mean, the greater the probability that the next measured variate will deviate less far. In other words, an extreme event is likely to be followed by a less extreme event. It is a stretch (and invalid, generally) to extrapolate this well-…

> There are many complex systems that maintain or increase their complexity.

Increased complexity is only achieved with additional energy input. im suggesting that if energy (read: money) going into the system decreases rather than increases, there will be a reduction in complexity.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#24

Post by nyxtom »

Highly depends on where you work. In my company we stick with "use boring stuff" and have a limited amount of "innovation spending". I look at the complexity of these other things mostly as a computer science theory and ways that language and solving problems could be done.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#25

Post by briandear »

usrn wrote: post #10
DerekBickerton wrote: post #3

For me it's a miracle each time my PC boots. We often forget the sheer marvel of modern computers and need to appreciate what we have. Remember Steve Jobs on stage showcasing how you could send an email with an iPhone. Back then it was amazing, but now it's common and we're all jaded about it. We need to recapture the joy of computing, not build large overarching abstractions.

The iPhone is very pretty but the software was not technically impressive. I have much older handheld PCs that could send emails and can still do more than the current iPhone.

Can you do augmented reality on your handheld PC? How about edit HD video?

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#27

Post by culopatin »

usrn wrote: post #10
DerekBickerton wrote: post #3

For me it's a miracle each time my PC boots. We often forget the sheer marvel of modern computers and need to appreciate what we have. Remember Steve Jobs on stage showcasing how you could send an email with an iPhone. Back then it was amazing, but now it's common and we're all jaded about it. We need to recapture the joy of computing, not build large overarching abstractions.

The iPhone is very pretty but the software was not technically impressive. I have much older handheld PCs that could send emails and can still do more than the current iPhone.

You completely missed the point.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#28

Post by graderjs »

It's another way to favor incumbents with huge resources: it's an anti-competitive psyop to raise barriers to entry and stymie startups in endless shiny thing chasing, because the incumbents are scared of the disruption, so those big players that move a bit slower, seek ways to slow down the scrappy players that can move fast, while those "fast movers" get drunk on the koolaid of buzzwords manufactured on blogs from those incumbents, and trends like being agile, microservices, etc, while willingly injecting themselves with massive technical debt from overcomplicated frameworks, and nobody's allowed to question it otherwise it's civil flame war.

Even if you don't believe it's a conspiracy, you have to admit that: that dynamic favors incumbents, the big frameworks often come from the big incumbents, and if you are a big incumbent even if you weren't manufacturing this conspiracy but you saw its possibility I mean why not take advantage of it?

The outlier is the scrappy indie developer like Peter levels who runs his multi-million dollar a year business on his own basically on a single machine using PHP and only recently started using git. That may be an extreme example but it paints a picture of what radical effectiveness and efficiency looks like and it's vastly different to the Kool-Aid but don't mention it otherwise the mob will come for you.

May the no-code & indie scene save us all. Amen

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