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Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

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Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#61

Post by eropple »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #49
eropple wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly does that follow? I'm a "devops engineer", and fully half of the concern around what I do is "how do we make this maintainable and know when maintenance is necessary?".

The death of devops/sysadmins/infrastructure engineers has been greatly exaggerated within the startup scene.

Agreed, though I think it somewhat depends on your definition. Most sysadmins at my clients have been uneasy at the pervasive sort of automation that we like; a lot of it is much more dev-heavy than a "modern" sysadmin (not your graybearded Perl wizard) seems comfortable with. Everybody else? Business is pretty great.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#62

Post by abalashov »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #2

"If the President had picked me to predict which country [in postwar Europe] would recover first, I would say, 'Bring me the records of maintenance.' The nation with the best maintenance will recover first. Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. They haven't got it in Russia. If I got in there in the warehouse, let's say, and I saw that the broom had a special nail, I would say, 'This is the nail o…

Hoffer is wrong. He's confusing different military philosophies with this mixed up idea about national identity regarding "maintenance". I don't think anyone would suggest Germany didn't perform a minor miracle by rebuilding as quickly as they did (with massive support), but the Russians went from having half their country burned to the ground, to a world superpower (also with a large amount of support), in a shorter…

More than half. The vast majority of Soviet population and industrial base was in the burned-down part.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#63

Post by flukus »

draw_down wrote: post #4

You might say I've observed this many times in my career. I think the best move career-wise is to be one of the people who makes the new thing. Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. At least in my experience. Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised…

> Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well.

Next time I have a say in hiring I'm not even going to bother looking at people who have only done green fields work. They've never had the opportunity to learn from their (or others) mistakes.

> Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance)

What do you consider innovation? Two I'd point to are Bram Moolenaar (vim) and Linus Torvalds. They both wanted to clone existing systems, not to innovate. The same goes for many other open source creators, they had a need to solve, it wasn't a creative exercise.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#66

Post by thisrod »

draw_down wrote: post #4

You might say I've observed this many times in my career. I think the best move career-wise is to be one of the people who makes the new thing. Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. At least in my experience. Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised…

> who is the most famous maintainer you can think of?

The pope.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#67

Post by vacri »

whack wrote: post #50

You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position. "Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth" "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" "Auto mechanics make the world go round. Without them, we would have no way of getting places" Ultimately, all such arguments are inane and pointless because every single j…

I think you overestimate both the market saturation and lucrativeness of nannies.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#68

Post by avn2109 »

euske wrote: post #45
milquetoastaf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. Yep, no other cultures maintain anything.

This is pretty laughable. To me, almost every Western country is half-broken. When I lived in the US, I was surprised how frequent power faults were there. Streets are full of bumps and corroded pipes were everywhere. And in Europe. Do they have any concept of a decent public bathroom over there? Oh, and don't get me started on how badly their trains are operating. I bet that many train accidents are due to the poor…

The GP quote contrasts "the West" to Russia, which is itself overwhelmingly White. It's hard to see a white supremacist angle on a comparison between two majority-white blocs.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#69

Post by [deleted] »

eropple wrote: post #61
toomuchtodo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of devops/sysadmins/infrastructure engineers has been greatly exaggerated within the startup scene.

Agreed, though I think it somewhat depends on your definition. Most sysadmins at my clients have been uneasy at the pervasive sort of automation that we like; a lot of it is much more dev-heavy than a "modern" sysadmin (not your graybearded Perl wizard) seems comfortable with. Everybody else? Business is pretty great.

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