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Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

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Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#131

Post by petra »

corysama wrote: post #27

One of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's "Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?" It addresses your question directly, but at a very, very high level. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY Note that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and that the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote. Instead, it is…

I wonder why did he chose to built demo applications, instead of a powerful and useful development tool that has strong value somewhere ?

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#132

Post by yawz »

"Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

IMHO, it takes technical and personal maturity to come to the conclusion above. Good architecture (or software or dev process or anything) should only have/contain the simplest things that are necessary.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#133

Post by crdoconnor »

kosinus wrote: post #125
SatvikBeri wrote: post #63

Many of these practices are popularized by Google/Facebook/Amazon but don't make sense for a company with 100 or even 1,000 people. I try to focus on whether a practice will solve a concrete problem we're facing. Switching from Hadoop to Spark was clearly a good idea for our team, even though it required learning a new stack, but there isn't a strong reason to switch to Flink or start using Haskell. Agile makes sense…

One thing that bothers me is the 'relational databases are good enough' statement, that is repeated in other contexts as well. But especially here, where we're talking about reducing complexity, it feels off to me. PostgreSQL and MySQL seem to me like incredibly complex packages. SQL, the language, is not easy to master either; most programmers I meet know mostly basics. On top of that, there's a long ongoing history…

Postgres and MySQL aren't overly complicated for simple use cases.

A lot of other technologies drop complications like foreign keys which you won't miss when you start developing software but it gives guarantees you will miss sorely when you start seeing inconsistent data 6 months in.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#134

Post by krptos »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #63

Many of these practices are popularized by Google/Facebook/Amazon but don't make sense for a company with 100 or even 1,000 people. I try to focus on whether a practice will solve a concrete problem we're facing. Switching from Hadoop to Spark was clearly a good idea for our team, even though it required learning a new stack, but there isn't a strong reason to switch to Flink or start using Haskell. Agile makes sense…

"putting your logic into types is better"

Can you elaborate on that one? Sounds interesting to me.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#135

Post by devty »

kosinus wrote: post #125
SatvikBeri wrote: post #63

Many of these practices are popularized by Google/Facebook/Amazon but don't make sense for a company with 100 or even 1,000 people. I try to focus on whether a practice will solve a concrete problem we're facing. Switching from Hadoop to Spark was clearly a good idea for our team, even though it required learning a new stack, but there isn't a strong reason to switch to Flink or start using Haskell. Agile makes sense…

One thing that bothers me is the 'relational databases are good enough' statement, that is repeated in other contexts as well. But especially here, where we're talking about reducing complexity, it feels off to me. PostgreSQL and MySQL seem to me like incredibly complex packages. SQL, the language, is not easy to master either; most programmers I meet know mostly basics. On top of that, there's a long ongoing history…

Relational databases are not simple systems as you say, but they do seem to me simpler to use - especially in the 95% case where a single, large enough machine hosting postgresql/mysql is entirely sufficient.

Key-value stores are "easy", but what I think isn't easy is to reduce your business domain to a simple key-value model without sacrificing promises and gaurantees offered by a good relational database system.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#137

Post by crdoconnor »

PaulHoule wrote: post #9

Continuous integration is a good thing. Back in the bad old days you'd have three people working on parts of the system for 6 months and plan to snap them together in 2 weeks and it would take more like another 6 months. Agile methods are also useful. If you can't plan 2 weeks of work you can probably not plan 6 months. When agile methods harden into branded processes and where there is no consensus on the ground rul…

I find agile works and works well when you limit the definition to "do what you can to avoid waterfall".

Where it starts to be about how you conduct meetings then it tends to fall to pieces.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#138

Post by abecedarius »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #123
corysama wrote: post #27

One of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's "Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?" It addresses your question directly, but at a very, very high level. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY Note that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and that the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote. Instead, it is…

That is absurd. You can't write an OS in 100KLOC.

http://www.projectoberon.com/ is released and small enough for a book in the dead-trees format.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#139

Post by dreish »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #123
corysama wrote: post #27

One of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's "Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?" It addresses your question directly, but at a very, very high level. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY Note that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and that the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote. Instead, it is…

That is absurd. You can't write an OS in 100KLOC.

In case you're not joking, MINIX is much smaller than 100KLOCs.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#140

Post by spinlock »

fsloth wrote: post #90
WalterSear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like the 'Agile' team is doing standups right. There are either too many people in the room, or people are talking too much, and probably about the wrong things. And, if they are doing standups wrong, I question how much else they are cargo-culting.

Generally claiming that a person is doing the method wrong when the method brings no percieved benefits raises a red flag on the general applicability and value of the methodology itself on the problem the person is trying to solve. There is no one true way to organize development of software and generally shoehorning dogma without proof of value is counterproductive.

I think you can absolutely diagnose an hour-long daily standup as "wrong". Standups need to be limited to 10-15 minutes. That's one of the key tenants of standups: they need to be short and focused.
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