Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by 77pt77 » Tue, May 09, 2017, 2:14 PM UTC

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…

> TL;DR: Japan is nice.

True, but was also devastated by a war that allowed rebuilding almost from scratch.

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

#162

Post by danielam » Tue, May 09, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

There's an analogy here vis-a-vis tradition/progress. In order to be reasonably sure that a change is an improvement, you must understand what you're changing and how. To borrow a Chestertonian example, if you encounter a fence and you don't know why it's there, find out why before you remove it. Maintainers are in the best position to understand the impact of making changes, and because of that, they're able to function as either advisers or as "innovators" by knowing where improvements can be made and having the knowledge to understand why they're improvements.

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

#163

Post by frabbit » Tue, May 09, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

I found the thesis interesting and plausible: that innovation is fetishized.

But on a slight tangent I wondered whether the "innovation" that they complain about is a particular variant, one that we're all familiar with here: a pseudo-libertarian start-up variant

  "Innovation ideology is overvalued, often insubstantial, and preoccupied with well-to-do white guys … in a small region of California"

It seems easy to argue against this tired representative of innovation.

By contrast there are those that would argue that most of the major technological and scientific gains have arisen, not from these VC hype-machines, but from large-scale state planning and investment. One of the best expositions of this argument is from economist Mariana Mazzucato: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPvG_fGPvQo

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

#164

Post by nostrademons » Tue, May 09, 2017, 6:08 PM UTC

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #20

nostrademons wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintenance and green-field development are different skillsets. Green-field development requires that you can envision what doesn't exist and hold it in your head long enough, and precisely enough, to build it. Maintenance requires that you take what already exists and improve it. Green-field development tends to be more intuitive, and it requires the ability to balance many trade-offs and consider many possible sol…

So, I think I agree with you, in general, that people can be better suited to green-field or maintenance, both from a skillset and personality perspective. But I also think good, active maintenance can have a lot of creativity and require, as you say, envisioning what doesn't exist. If we're just talking about bug fixes and level-2 support or something, sure, that's mostly about attention to detail, etc. However, mai…

I guess I should've said "a different kind of creativity" rather than "less creativity". When you're doing maintenance work - even the sorts of large scale rewrites that totally change the architecture - your requirements are known. You can write down the goal, ideally write automated tests for it, and then you're done when the system passes the tests. Figuring out the solution may require a lot of creativity and intuitive leaps, but at least both the starting and ending points are expressed in rational terms.

For green-field software products (contracting is different, and much more akin to product maintenance), your requirements are unknown. Your ultimate acceptance criteria is "does the user like it?", which is an emotional one, not a logical one. This requires that you connect the rational part of your brain, which speaks the language of the machine, with the emotional part, which speaks the language of the user. Being able to exercise both parts in tandem is a very rare skillset, which is why market rates for truly innovative programmers range into the millions. (This ability to fuse emotional & rational thinking together is also a skillset required of CEOs, executives, politicians, and pop entertainers, all of which are also professions with compensation reaching into the millions.)

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

#165

Post by juliangoldsmith » Tue, May 09, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #144

justicezyx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a major flaw in the analogy. Basically, maintenance of complex systems or assets, are intellectually demanding tasks. All your examples, however, are completely the opposite. I am not saying that the jobs do not require skills, it's just that these skills are not that valuable. Also maintainer adds value in the positive way. Where all your example is to prevent value loss. The 2 are fundamentally dif…

> Basically, maintenance of complex systems or assets, are intellectually demanding tasks. Not as hard as making those systems in the first place. > I am not saying that the jobs do not require skills, it's just that these skills are not that valuable. I'm not convinced that an average network engineer does a more challenging (or valuable) job than an average car mechanic.

>I'm not convinced that an average network engineer does a more challenging (or valuable) job than an average car mechanic.

Mechanical work on cars isn't rocket science, in the same way that IT work isn't. It's difficult if you don't know what you're doing, and not hard if you do.

Both things most anyone could do (at least at a basic level) themselves, but most people don't care to learn.

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

#166

Post by jansho » Tue, May 09, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

kk_cz wrote: post #150

jansho wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes all roles are important. If elephants get wiped out, there will be some consequences. If insects or algae gets wiped out, the world is apocalyptically screwed.

yet you are comparing the impact of wiping out two species of mammals with possible impact of all insects or algae being gone...

Well no the point is that while all roles are important, some are so foundational that if they break down, the whole system breaks down. Innovation doesn't happen all the time, and it needn't to, as long as the system is stable and works for everyone (in theory.) We still need it when it's required, otherwise maintainers are indeed honourable roles.

(Here's one source for my counter-analogy: http://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.ht... )

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

#167

Post by abalashov » Tue, May 09, 2017, 7:53 PM UTC

animal531 wrote: post #152

abalashov wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree as regards four year-olds. That said, the usefulness of older children, even ~8-10, is frequently underestimated. There was a time when they made useful apprentices and assistants, though admittedly at crafts that were probably less abstract and specialised. Still, I started programming and using UNIX when I was 9. I imagine I was probably capable of some amount of useful output by 11-12, though it would have…

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, perhaps because people don't want to imagine modern child labour. From my side, in the company where I work there are a small handful of people who could easily be replaced with fully unskilled labour (ie. an 8-12yo) with no negative effects.

I wasn't proposing that we employ children! My statement was made in the context of the discussion about the practicality of engaging and occupying children of certain ages in higher-order cognitive tasks.

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

#168

Post by Tenhundfeld » Tue, May 09, 2017, 8:58 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #164

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think I agree with you, in general, that people can be better suited to green-field or maintenance, both from a skillset and personality perspective. But I also think good, active maintenance can have a lot of creativity and require, as you say, envisioning what doesn't exist. If we're just talking about bug fixes and level-2 support or something, sure, that's mostly about attention to detail, etc. However, mai…

I guess I should've said "a different kind of creativity" rather than "less creativity". When you're doing maintenance work - even the sorts of large scale rewrites that totally change the architecture - your requirements are known . You can write down the goal, ideally write automated tests for it, and then you're done when the system passes the tests. Figuring out the solution may require a lot of creativity and in…

Yeah, that's fair. I'd agree green-field product development is different from maintenance. It requires great UX thinking, really understanding the users, product-market fit, maybe some behavioral economics, etc.

I was thinking more about enterprise or line-of-business green-field development. That still benefits from all of the things we're talking about, but it's a different set of problems to focus on.

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

#169

Post by tormeh » Tue, May 09, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

justicezyx wrote: post #97

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 there is a major flaw in the analogy. Basically, maintenance of complex systems or assets, are intellectually demanding tasks. All your examples, however, are completely the opposite. I am not saying that the jobs do not require skills, it's just that these skills are not that valuable. Also maintainer adds value in the positive way. Where all your example is to prevent value loss. The 2 are fundamentally dif…

>maintainer is not needed to make the system running, if nothing changes

Something tells me that you haven't maintained badly designed systems. Some actually do require manual attention from time to time, even if nothing changes. A single non-rotatable log file becomes too big and a restart has to be scheduled or an application starts behaving weirdly because a buggy and rarely used bit of code suddenly got used once and it destabilized the entire thing... I'm sure there's a lot of other ways in which applications can require maintenance even if it hasn't been updated for months.

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

#170

Post by tormeh » Tue, May 09, 2017, 9:41 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #137

cgio wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better the design the less the maintenance. There might not be a perfect design in the real world, and we would agree on that. But at least the ideal perfect design would imply zero maintenance.

What happens if requirements change? What happens if a related technology is invented which would make your current design more efficient? Do you class changes like that under maintenance? And how do you check your theoretically 'no-maintenance-required' design genuinely doesn't need any maintenance? And how do you get round the catch 22 that you can't build a perfect system without perfect knowledge about what to bu…

Well, maintenance is what you do to avoid (negative) change. Changing requirements or improvements are not maintenance.