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Choose Boring Technology

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Re: Choose Boring Technology

#191

Post by jasode »

c0vfefe wrote: post #178
jasode wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the real world with limited resources, limited skills, limited budgets and limited brain power, yes code is a liability. That's an unbalanced conclusion. Code can be a liability but it can also be an asset . Do we have limited resources? Maybe writing new code can help. E.g. In cars, the electronic fuel injectors have computer code determining the optimal amount of gas to inject to minimize fuel usage. Fuel effic…

> That's an unbalanced conclusion. Code can be a liability but it can also be an asset. maybe that's why he said: > Not only a liability, but a liability among other things.

>maybe that's why he said: > Not only a liability, but a liability among other things.

It was my mistake then and I misinterpreted "among other things" to mean : "Code is not just a liability but it's a liability among the other things I just listed like limited resources and limited brainpower" instead of "Code is a liability among other things I won't say explicitly like code also being an asset".

Because I interepreted it the 1st way, I wanted to emphasize the opposite view: that limited brainpower is why code can be an asset to relieve humans from mundane boring calculations to redirect that precious brainpower to higher level creative thinking. Limited resources also motivates new code that can be an asset to expand those resources.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#192

Post by brightball »

oftenwrong wrote: post #58

Always glad to see this making the rounds, as it has been influential for me, especially the perspective of "Happiness comes from shipping stuff". I often think about this part, in particular: >Then we walked away. We didn’t do anything related to activity feeds for years after that. We barely even thought about it. >Then one day I said, “hey, I wonder how activity feeds is doing.” And I looked at it and was surprise…

The code that I've shipped that, 10 years later still runs at previous organizations with no support needed is really something I'm very proud of when I look back.

At once point we actually wrote an AJAX site that worked in IE6, Firefox and Safari (pre-Chrome), before Prototype, jQuery or JSON was even a thing...and it still worked perfectly 10 years later. All hand coded JS and backend PHP + Java.

It's one of the reasons that I get kinda shocked when I see people look at code on Github and then avoid it because it hasn't had a recent commit. It's also of the big reasons that I'm a fan of Elixir, because the language is approaching a point where it's creators consider it "complete". Boring and stable is the goal.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#193

Post by buboard »

kabes wrote: post #150

Somewhat playing devil's advocate, but if everyone joins that club, we keep the status quo and there's no more progress. If everyone joined this club in the 50's/60's we'd still be writing assembly. It's the guys pushing new shiny things that allows our domain to go forward, we just need to accept that 90% of the shiny new things eventually turn out to be crap. It's about the other 10%.

You can argue there has been a lot of progress in web development since 2000, and you can argue it hasn't. I think we did a lot of circles around ourselves, creating new frameworks that do the same stuff as the ones before them. The real progress was in browsers and CSS which allowed things like access to device cameras/inputs, rtc technologies and adaptible layouts.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#194

Post by cutler »

gfodor wrote: post #177
xwdv wrote: post #86

There’s a certain amount of ladder kicking involved in telling people to choose boring and beige technologies after you started up your career chasing after new and exciting shiny things. Every developer should spend some time working at the bleeding edge, so they know how it feels to get cut. The best time is absolutely at the beginning, when you’re a fresh grad and have the energy. You have the rest of your life to…

Surely what you state here can be said of any advice given due to experience. As long as the natural inclinations of younger developers push up against said advice, it's completely sane to give it. Because without it, young developers will have an incomplete mental model, and will lack the intellectual tools to potentially make better choices early in their career. Also it seems to miss the point somewhat: choosing '…

Because my family need feeding and housing.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#195

Post by barbecue_sauce »

thunderbong wrote: post #10
neilwilson wrote: post #5

There's a longer term issue that appears to be missing here. At what point do you change? There must be a point otherwise we'd all be here writing COBOL/CICS with some whizzy Javascript interface library. Over time it becomes harder and harder and more and more expensive to maintain old technology. Because frankly maintaining old technology is pretty boring and career destroying so you need to be paid more and more t…

Adabas brought back memories. And now when I see all the hype about NoSQL, I'm remember Shirley Bassey's fantastic song - 'History Repeating'

Is NoSQL even still hyped? I thought the hype cycle had moved on to NewSQL at this point.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#196

Post by c0vfefe »

jasode wrote: post #191
c0vfefe wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's an unbalanced conclusion. Code can be a liability but it can also be an asset. maybe that's why he said: > Not only a liability, but a liability among other things.

>maybe that's why he said: > Not only a liability, but a liability among other things. It was my mistake then and I misinterpreted "among other things" to mean : "Code is not just a liability but it's a liability among the other things I just listed like limited resources and limited brainpower" instead of "Code is a liability among other things I won't say explicitly like code also being an asset" . Because I intere…

I can understand being confused by that wording, it wasn't the greatest. :)

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#197

Post by fogetti »

bonoboTP wrote: post #168
fogetti wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that those people who chose shiny new technology only see the benefit, while all the others in the company will rot in hell because of the stupid choice of a junior engineer (who jumped ships 3 times meanwhile). I don't see how does that benefit the company? The whole point of the article is that you should make wise technology decisions which benefits the whole organization.

> The problem is that those people who chose shiny new technology only see the benefit, while all the others in the company will rot in hell because of the stupid choice of a junior engineer (who jumped ships 3 times meanwhile). I don't see how does that benefit the company? The whole point of the article is that you should make wise technology decisions which benefits the whole organization. Sure, if your interests…

> Why would he care how the old company is doing?

Because at one point one recruiter or HR manager will ask him to provide a reference from his previous manager? And when he looks like an absolute ass he can pad his resume with whatever he wants? Short time thinking will not get rewards in the long run in that case.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#198

Post by lowercased »

csours wrote: post #175
oftenwrong wrote: post #58

Always glad to see this making the rounds, as it has been influential for me, especially the perspective of "Happiness comes from shipping stuff". I often think about this part, in particular: >Then we walked away. We didn’t do anything related to activity feeds for years after that. We barely even thought about it. >Then one day I said, “hey, I wonder how activity feeds is doing.” And I looked at it and was surprise…

Yesterday reviewed my first script that went global about 8 years ago. I think it had one update from my original deployment. =)

In 2017 I got a call from someone saying "the system's down". It was code I'd deployed for them in 2002. Crazy reviewing some of that code. Some was really good, some was... not so much. :)

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#199

Post by fogetti »

c0vfefe wrote: post #173
fogetti wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that those people who chose shiny new technology only see the benefit, while all the others in the company will rot in hell because of the stupid choice of a junior engineer (who jumped ships 3 times meanwhile). I don't see how does that benefit the company? The whole point of the article is that you should make wise technology decisions which benefits the whole organization.

> while all the others in the company will rot in hell because of the stupid choice of a junior engineer If a team's management can't prevent this from happening, then they've got bigger problems to worry about.

True. But some people will do everything (including ruining team morale) to play with their new shiny toy and it's usually easier to ruin that than taking steps for prevention. But you are generally right.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#200

Post by manishsharan »

sydd wrote: post #84
lvh wrote: post #69

Author mentions Clojure a few times as an example of shiny-thing. Ironically, it's one of the few languages that I can reliably do in the browser, on the backend (on real servers or say, Lambdas), and build native binaries for -- which addresses the later "many tools" problem better than a "boring" programming language like Ruby. Unless you don't care about frontend code I guess :-) (Overall this talk is fine! I thin…

But: - good luck finding a Clojure programmer if your current one quits. - good luck finding answers for your exotic bug/performance issue etc. Code is a liability, it's much more than language/VM/compiler features

I have found debugging in Clojure is much easier as you could test out each function in REPL and the fact that clojure code is stateless. Debugging/refactoring a complex business rule in Java or Javascript is painful because developer end up writing humongous methods with generous sprinkling of state .
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