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Choose Boring Technology

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Re: Choose Boring Technology

#341

Post by dtjohnnymonkey »

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…

Systems that provide value over long periods of time with zero input are the opposite of tech debt. Compound interest?

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#342

Post by mcguire »

mrfredward wrote: post #280
mcguire wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Many of these companies are started by engineers or product managers who have seen the boring solutions not work for them. " Most of the time (not all, but almost all of the time), if a "boring solution" doesn't work for you, the problem is you , not the solution. There's a reason it is boring.

>if a "boring solution" doesn't work for you, the problem is you, not the solution Were the people who hated their pagers and wanted cell phones idiots? All the people who were writing GUIs in C and debugging memory leaks...was the problem that they were shitty programmers, or is there something to be gained by spending more time on the business logic and less time on memory management? It's healthy to see the shortc…

"Idiots?" "Shitty programmers?"

Have you tried some of the modern decaffeinated brands? Some of them taste almost as good as regular coffee.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#343

Post by guiolp »

mcguire wrote: post #258
bonoboTP wrote: post #168

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. Sure, if your interests…

Once upon a time, there was value seen in the weird concept of "professionalism."

Sounds like a sucker's game to me.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#344

Post by macspoofing »

lvh wrote: post #77
macspoofing wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a tech stack, which is not the same as, for example, a modern web application. You can build a perfectly modern web app with 'old' Java/JEE stack, backed by an unsexy SQL-based database. You don't need Node.js with MongoDB. Techstacks very very very rarely enable new use-cases. They are the equivalent of fashion statements by young developers who haven't learned what it means to support software…

Do you similarly feel like frontend stacks have seen no meaningful innovation? I think your argument works fine-ish for backends but it's bananas to suggest that jQuery is the same thing as React or Svelte. I do security for a living and maybe 100% of all jQuery sites have XSS. If I find a React page I can just grep for dangerouslySetInnerHTML and I'm 80% of the way there. (I am exaggerating, but hopefully my point i…

What is a new use-cases that React brought in, that couldn't be replicated with plain old JavaScript?

Browser capabilities are game-changers, not a tech stack that runs on top of them. I don't need React or Angular or Node or whatever to make use of them. I can use those capabilities with plain old Java Servlets and JavaScript.

React is a shiny new jQuery - that's all it is. WebAssembly, Canvas, WebRTC, etc. those are something different. Those enable new use cases.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#345

Post by morenoh149 »

This is why I stick with Django, DRF, Postgres, Reactjs, linux vms and REST over HTTP. Once the business problems are solved we can try out new tech. With this stack I've built many web apps and there are fewer surprises.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#346

Post by 6chars »

bpyne wrote: post #267

I'm only part way through the presentation, but I loved this line. "And when people succumb to this instinct they tell themselves that they’re giving developers freedom. And sure, it is freedom, but it's a very narrow definition of what freedom is." Yup. You get the freedom to choose a language and/or database with unknowns but you lose the freedom to leave work at a reasonable hour to see your family, pursue a hobby…

I'm uncomfortable with this rehearsal analogy. I'd rather have a company pay me to learn new things than spend my free time coding when I could be seeing my family, pursuing a hobby, or vegging out. From my employer's perspective, I agree that boring is usually better, but as an individual, I'd rather learn on the job than having to feel the need to "rehearse" for my job.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#347

Post by kyle-rb »

>The grim paradox of this law of software is that you should probably be using the tool that you hate the most. You hate it because you know the most about it.

I think I'm the opposite way. I tend to like technologies when I know all the quirks, e.g. CSS:

"Well of course you have to make the parent element positioned in order to get the child's absolute positioning to work, how else would you do it?"

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#348

Post by sjun »

There's a big movement in the Web community to move everything to JavaScript. Js on the server side with Node, html generated by Javascript, and the latest trend CSS-in-js.

On one hand, this can be argued as centralizing on one technology that will reduce long term cost because the operational stack around it can be reused: tests, build tools, deployment. However it very much can be seen as adding another technology to manage since it's adding a shiny new library to maintain with all the bugs and kinks along the way.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#349

Post by gabaug »

Dan's “re-use the technologies you already have deployed instead of adding redundant technologies” point is what resonates most with me.

> The interesting thing here is that none of the tools that you pick may be the “right tool” for any given job. But they can still be the right choice for the total set of jobs.

Even if that "one choice" isn't totally boring, at least you only have one thing to figure out all the kinks of and support.

Re: Choose Boring Technology

#350

Post by lvh »

macspoofing wrote: post #344
lvh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you similarly feel like frontend stacks have seen no meaningful innovation? I think your argument works fine-ish for backends but it's bananas to suggest that jQuery is the same thing as React or Svelte. I do security for a living and maybe 100% of all jQuery sites have XSS. If I find a React page I can just grep for dangerouslySetInnerHTML and I'm 80% of the way there. (I am exaggerating, but hopefully my point i…

What is a new use-cases that React brought in, that couldn't be replicated with plain old JavaScript? Browser capabilities are game-changers, not a tech stack that runs on top of them. I don't need React or Angular or Node or whatever to make use of them. I can use those capabilities with plain old Java Servlets and JavaScript. React is a shiny new jQuery - that's all it is. WebAssembly, Canvas, WebRTC, etc. those ar…

Concepts and abstractions, like the virtual DOM, matter. Just because you could in an abstract sense (of course you could! It’s a JS library) doesn’t mean anyone actually could.

Thought experiment: why does your argument not apply to, say, C? Why bother doing new language or library design? It’s all int 80h eventually.

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