Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

robinrendle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 199 posts

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#181

Post by mmt »

Illniyar wrote: post #158
mmt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I laughed a bit when I read that you use Oracle and don't have the budget for more people. Why? Because you believe the former causes the latter? There are many valid criticisms to be levied against Oracle the company, enteprise software in general, and especially its pricing. However, it's important to remember that, for many businesses, it's either impractical or downright impossible to hire enough engineers to m…

Errr... the cost value of Oracle database is skewed. It simply costs sooo much it's impractical for most companies to use, especially if they cannot afford more then 1 decent engineer. We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu). Also for that matter, I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres or can be made with MySQL and another service such as Redis…

> We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu).

Amortized over what period of time, though? Is that today's price, or 17 years ago? Is that list price or the price an actual small user would pay?

> I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres

I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true 17 years ago, circa Oracle 9i?

> can be made with

Businesses whose core competency isn't tech and/or who aren't located in a tech hub aren't likely even to consider the "make" option.

> It also impractical to maintain without a dedicated DBA.

That's simply false, as the Oracle DBA I know routinely contraced out to companies as a temporary, non-dedicated DBA.

I suspect there's another growth/tech-centric bias at work in this assertion.

All that said, I'm not a proponent of Oracle (or enterprise software in general), but I am a proponent of fact-based discussions.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#182

Post by andrewingram »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #170
andrewingram wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you only display the images at a predefined size, a PNG (designed for that size) will be crisper than an SVG. Discovered this at a previous job where we were doing a rebrand, we were using SVGs for the logo and monograms on the website and the designers complained that they didn't look good. We compared them with equivalent PNGs and the quality was much better. General guidance: * Photo - Use JPG, WebP or similar…

Or your SVGs were desined in Illustrator without actually modifying the code so that all of the coordinates in them would be integers. Had this issue about 5 years ago. Good SVGs need to go through a manual code filtering step.

In this particular case, it wasn’t integer coordinates that were the issue, but the antialiasing quality, browsers (at the time, 3 years ago, might be better now) just couldn’t cut it. Say what you like about Adobe, but their algorithms are top-notch.

On the integer coordinates side of things, if an SVG has horizontal or vertical lines, I’ll always make sure they’re well-aligned before putting them into a UI.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#183

Post by anarazel »

mmt wrote: post #181
Illniyar wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errr... the cost value of Oracle database is skewed. It simply costs sooo much it's impractical for most companies to use, especially if they cannot afford more then 1 decent engineer. We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu). Also for that matter, I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres or can be made with MySQL and another service such as Redis…

> We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu). Amortized over what period of time, though? Is that today's price, or 17 years ago? Is that list price or the price an actual small user would pay? > I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true…

> > I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres

> I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true 17 years ago, circa Oracle 9i?

As somebody working on PostgreSQL full time, I very much agree on that. Neither today nor back in the 9i days has PostgreSQL implemented everything Oracle provides. Nor the reverse, for that matter. And I'm not just talking about features nobody uses.

> > It also impractical to maintain without a dedicated DBA.

> That's simply false, as the Oracle DBA I know routinely contraced out to companies as a temporary, non-dedicated DBA.

I do think it's easier to operate several databases, including PG, without a dedicated DBA in comparison to Oracle. Obviously it's entirely possible for both.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#184

Post by Illniyar »

mmt wrote: post #181
Illniyar wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errr... the cost value of Oracle database is skewed. It simply costs sooo much it's impractical for most companies to use, especially if they cannot afford more then 1 decent engineer. We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu). Also for that matter, I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres or can be made with MySQL and another service such as Redis…

> We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu). Amortized over what period of time, though? Is that today's price, or 17 years ago? Is that list price or the price an actual small user would pay? > I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true…

> Amortized over what period of time, though? Is that today's price, or 17 years ago? Is that list price or the price an actual small user would pay?

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-...

Today's prices. 10s of thousands it is still whether you get it at retail price (which is unlikely) or if you amortize it for several years (including yearly support of course).

An actual small user is still likely to pay 10s of thousands of dollars a year.

> I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true 17 years ago, circa Oracle 9i?

Can you provide me with such a feature that Oracle has but Postgres doesn't and is in demand?

Oracle db is a masterpiece and has the best performance of any database I'm aware of , sometimes several times more if properly configured. That was it's big selling point in days of vertical scaling - the hardware was often a lot more expensive then oracle's licensing.

Why are you bringing up a version from 2001? Was that mentioned in parent posts?

> Businesses whose core competency isn't tech and/or who aren't located in a tech hub aren't likely even to consider the "make" option.

Business without tech as a core competency outsource.

> That's simply false, as the Oracle DBA I know routinely contraced out to companies as a temporary, non-dedicated DBA.

I suppose you could run an oracle DB with no or little DBA support. But the companies I know who use it use features that require constant DBA support - replication being the biggest one.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#185

Post by vbezhenar »

nickpeterson wrote: post #60
vbezhenar wrote: post #35

I'm the only competent developer in our company. So believe it or not, but I'm doing it all, from tinkering in disassembled Oracle 9i JDBC driver, to planning Oracle migration to writing SQL queries, reverse-engineering stored procedures, modifying Delphi sources, writing Java code, writing Kotlin code, writing HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Objective C, rolling out some tiny PHP website, writing brute-forcer to crack P12 pr…

I'm sure your reasons are valid, but I laughed a bit when I read that you use Oracle and don't have the budget for more people.

It's historical reasons. They use Oracle 9i with 15-year old software and they don't have budget to upgrade, so, I guess, they'll use it for another 15 years. Actually it works well for its age. I'd say that PostgreSQL would as well and I'd choose it any day if I have to pay for it. But I have to work with what I've got.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#186

Post by vbezhenar »

fouc wrote: post #89
vbezhenar wrote: post #35

I'm the only competent developer in our company. So believe it or not, but I'm doing it all, from tinkering in disassembled Oracle 9i JDBC driver, to planning Oracle migration to writing SQL queries, reverse-engineering stored procedures, modifying Delphi sources, writing Java code, writing Kotlin code, writing HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Objective C, rolling out some tiny PHP website, writing brute-forcer to crack P12 pr…

How many developers are there at your company?

5 people, me as a developer, another guy as a mostly database stuff (he knows Java and sometimes helps me, but prefers to work with database-related tasks), 2 kind of management guys to work with papers, money, documents and all that stuff and recently we hired one young guy to help with boring stuff (something like first line technical support).

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#187

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Pretty sure software architecture applies to both frontend and backend development, but for whatever reason, most frontend developers seems to ignore it (not everyone, but most public libraries are terrible architecture-wise).

Since the skill it's transitive and it's one of the skills that gives the highest value long term, I don't see how there couldn't be a fullstack developer.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#188

Post by paulie_a »

bhanu423 wrote: post #149
mikekchar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates are interesting and I encourage anybody to play with the statistics to see how it works. There are 2 scenarios you need to consider. First is the scenario where the stake holder asks for something, the thing is possible (i.e. it's a matter of working on it until it's done), they don't change their mind, the team doesn't have some kind of emotional incident (like people refusing to work together, someone hav…

Excellent points, I think the whole point of SCRUM planning is to get estimations correctly and it is not as easy reading few articles on it. Hence involving a scrum-master is highly recommended who is usually a person like mikekchar who has done it multiple times atleast.

The scrum master has to have a fundamental understanding that 8 hours of work is not one day. It's generally interrupted by meetings, helping out a coworker, crisis mode on some bug and also generally fucking around with coworkers. When a Dev says 8 hours that should automatically be translated to 16-24 because they won't actually be able to be "heads down"

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#189

Post by mmt »

Illniyar wrote: post #184
mmt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu). Amortized over what period of time, though? Is that today's price, or 17 years ago? Is that list price or the price an actual small user would pay? > I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true…

> Amortized over what period of time, though? Is that today's price, or 17 years ago? Is that list price or the price an actual small user would pay? http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-... Today's prices. 10s of thousands it is still whether you get it at retail price (which is unlikely) or if you amortize it for several years (including yearly support of course). An actual small user is stil…

> Today's prices.

Perhaps not relevant, then.

> Why are you bringing up a version from 2001? Was that mentioned in parent posts?

Yes, Oracle 9i was specifically mentioned, which is why I find it bizarre, if not inappropriate, to criticize (let alone laugh, as an upthread commenter did), with not just "20/20 hindsight" but also with today's technology availability.

> Business without tech as a core competency outsource.

That's just a synonym for "buy" in the "buy vs build" decision, whereas "make" is a synonym for "build".

Re: I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering

#190

Post by stickfigure »

mmt wrote: post #136
stickfigure wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course once you already have application an built around a platform, the switching costs can be high. See also: IE6. No argument from me there. But Oracle doesn't sell their product with the pitch "hahaha too bad you're stuck with us". They try to convince the next generation of ill-informed technology leaders that it would be a mistake to choose anything else. I've heard the pitch, and by the third time I heard "…

> I'm saying that 99.9% of Oracle customers would have been significantly better off from a cost, flexibility, and support perspective going with an alternative like Postgres when they started. Although I agree that some huge proportion [1] of businesses today would do very well to seriously consider Postgres as the first option before even looking at Oracle, I don't recall this being true 17 [2] or even 10 years ago…

I was building enterprise apps 10 years ago. 20, actually. I made the same arguments then, and I will stand by this evaluation now.

It reminds me of the early 2000s when IBM and WebLogic were selling 5-figure appserver licenses hand-over-fist into enterprises. I would have to dig, but I do recall a study sometime later finding that almost all of these customers were just using them as servlet containers. It's not that WebLogic, Oracle et al have no purpose, it's just that the people buying these things tend to have no idea what they're doing.

Post reply on HN