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Today’s Top Tech Skills

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Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#81

Post by [deleted] »

momokoko wrote: post #61
taffer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say so. Concurrency bugs, like lost updates, can be very subtle and hard to debug, and common databases don't prevent these kinds of bugs by default.

If someone on my team was writing a web app and spending time meddling around with transactions outside of whatever abstraction layer we were using on top of the DB without an incredibly good reason, we'd definitely be having a coaching moment, and if it continued, I'd likely help them find a role with another org where they might be a better fit. Any quality database abstraction provides fairly simple means to perfo…

[deleted]

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#82

Post by ownagefool »

taffer wrote: post #55
jackcodes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don’t need to know transaction isolation to do the vast majority of work on a typical web app.

I wouldn't say so. Concurrency bugs, like lost updates, can be very subtle and hard to debug, and common databases don't prevent these kinds of bugs by default.

I'd argue you should be aware of the transactions and isolations levels exist, like many things, but having to recite them in an interview situation is a different ballgame.

Otherwise, you end up in the situation where every second person has a different set of pet skills and you can't hire anyone because they need to know all the skills perfectly.

But it depends on what you're doing and your market. I've worked with people who took a pay cuts to go work for FAANG, after several interviews which they've studied for but I've decided it's not really needed when you're just writing a little in house CRUD webapp.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#83

Post by jmartrican »

In Java I'm a big fan of using SQL directly versus ORM. To that end I highly recommend JOOQ. I library that allows for object oriented SQL. Its not ORM, so you still compose SQL, you just get a lot objects and methods to allow you to construct your SQL in an OO, and functional, programming type way.

It also is a DB first approach. Where you construct your DB schemas and tables first, then use JOOQ to create objects that match your DB schemas. These objects allow you to reference the tables and fields of your DB in an OO way. From that point of view it may seem like ORM, but you use SQL to interact with the your DB.

Two of the things I really about JOOQ is that you stay in-tuned to SQL, which as we all know is very powerful and popular. Second, your SQL can get constructed in a procedural way based on input. So you can added to based on , for example, if query param were provided.

The creator of JOOQ, Lucas, has done good videos out there comparing SQL to ORM. What's cool about those videos is he does not mention JOOQ, maybe at the end. The videos are just comparing ORM to SQL and makes the case for SQL being way more powerful than ORM.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#84

Post by throwawaytoday5 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #16
murukesh_s wrote: post #13

Java is still undisputed in the enterprise. Node.js was a contender but lost steam. May be .net once it becomes truly platform neutral have a chance to take on Java. Until then most probably it will remain widely popular.

I figured that was mostly due to legacy code at this point; is it undisputed for new code too?

I've work for large national ISP where they are heavily trying to create a new series of network engineering tools (device discovery, adding new ARs with ease, upgrading existing devices, pragmatically change thru-puts between regions based on load, etc).

Most of the backends for these types of tools would explicitly be done in Java. Why did they chose Java? Mostly because they would staff entire teams with H1Bs and dump them after 5 years. The directors of these projects would only hear about "buzzwords" surrounding the latest tech if they themselves went to conferences or happened to luck out if the project managers they hired had varied experience.

Oddly enough, there's a lot of greenfield work being done using Scala at Verizon and Comcast. But from my direct experience, it's entirely dependent on the team. The more the team doesn't rely on contractors the more likely they are to use niche tech.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#85

Post by vsareto »

jackcodes wrote: post #78
mpartel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can seem that way, but the consequence of not knowing them is lots of subtle race conditions. Granted, most webapps probably don't have enough users to trigger them too often, and the impact is often limited e.g. because the kinds of inconsistencies you can introduce don't actually matter that much in many cases. For the majority of webapps, I'm not sure the default isolation level of MySQL and Postgres is an appr…

The vast majority of work on web apps is probably writing CRUD controller methods, proxies to upstream services, or React components. It’s like saying CSS transitions are vital; they aren’t, but probably affect the user experience for the average Joe just as much if not more than a phantom read. At that level of depth you just hand it over to the CSS champ or the DB champ.

>At that level of depth you just hand it over to the CSS champ or the DB champ.

Developers are blaming other developers for not knowing everything they do because businesses forced them to learn everything (Fullstack), but that's actually a bad arrangement and somehow the solution is to just punish the developers more rather than hiring DBAs.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#86

Post by yowlingcat »

MatekCopatek wrote: post #68
dathinab wrote: post #25

In the recent two or so years I was surprised to see how many people don't _really_ know about SQL. Sure they can write a simple insert and update query and maybe a join, assuming they can just ignore that there actually are different types of joins. But if you ask them about other _still fundamental_ knowledge like a _rough_ idea about what the different transaction isolation level are/mean/imply for you, they fail…

What would you say is the special thing about this particular bit of knowledge that made you point it out? To be perfectly honest, it seems quite arbitrary to me. I could say I'm surprised to see how many people don't know anything about the browser rendering pipeline and consequently produce badly performing interfaces. Someone else would complain about people's inability to do even the most basic Linux administrati…

It's not arbitrary because screwing up your data integrity is far and away one of the most painful and business critical mistakes you can make as an engineer. Your product isn't finished if it looks like it works, but is either storing data improperly at rest or doing the wrong thing with it.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#87

Post by imhoguy »

_bxg1 wrote: post #14

It remains weird and disturbing to me that "AWS" is treated as a skill. Not "cloud system management", but " AWS ". Edit: I do understand why it can be lucrative to have expertise with a specific cloud provider. It's just the status quo of these services being their own unique silos that disturbs me: I would personally be wary of making "ability to effectively use Amazon's servers" a pillar of my career.

> I would personally be wary of making "ability to effectively use Amazon's servers" a pillar of my career.

It is SEO for consultants to effectively catch customers/agencies with specific platform needs: AWS Architect, SAP Developer, Tibco Developer, Wordpress Programmer...

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#88

Post by yowlingcat »

sitkack wrote: post #57
_bxg1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Linux isn't owned by a single company. It runs on virtually every platform, including all of these hosting providers.

Bingo! There isn't a cloud OS and then an standards-ish implementation of that standard. All of the clouds are bespoke and closed source. That said, nothing weird about needing specific knowledge for running on the specific thing. If I run a motorpool that is all Prius, then I'll want Prius mechanics.

At some point, I think I hoped that Kubernetes would be that "cloud OS" but as time passes, I'm not sure that's going to happen and I continue to make sure I stay abreast of the various closed source cloud ecosystems, including AWS which has served me reliably for over a decade.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#89

Post by rongenre »

Good applications tend to get the database right first - since you can always re-write the mid-tier code relatively easily. It's pretty much essential to any developer.

Further it's a ridiculous superpower if you're not a developer - it's so empowering for anyone on the business side with questions to just go look in the db.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#90

Post by foepys »

_bxg1 wrote: post #69
jillesvangurp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there is a lot of new code being written for the JVM. E.g. Kotlin is a fine choice as a language for a new backend project these days with excellent support in frameworks like Spring Boot. Also it is a drop in solution in pretty much any Java project (as in you can mix the two and they interoperate without much fuss). Modern Spring Boot is pretty nice and getting nicer with each release. In terms of feature set…

I was specifically talking about Java, not the JVM in general. The latter is obviously still a great technology and it hosts some of the best up and coming languages.

You cannot meaningfully differentiate between Java and the JVM because all popular JVM languages (Skala, Clojure, Kotlin, Jython) can interact with Java libraries. In fact, they are even using this to market themselves.

Java libraries are the way to program for the JVM and all its (popular) languages.

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