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Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#241

Post by pmlnr »

fmjrey wrote: post #70

What matters most is what you want to still be there when the power goes off: data. No amount of processing power matters if you don't have the data. Everyone in the industry focuses too much on the processing side: objects, functions, containers, VMs, k8s, etc. but nobody really gives proper attention to data, its provenance, where it stays and where it goes, etc. I'm not saying engineers don't think about these thi…

I would add the problem of long term archiving - both as the physical medium and file formats into this. Will my jpgs be accessible 50 years dpwn the line? If yes, who will remember and have the equipment to read 100gb blu-ray mdisc?

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#243

Post by pmlnr »

arexxbifs wrote: post #217
crispinb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty shocking that we are where we are in 2020. That year sounds like the future to me, but in computer interface terms it's definitely dystopia. The market failure to cap all market failures!

The future was better in the past!

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1964418/

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#244

Post by tjalfi »

dane-pgp wrote: post #69

A piece of technology that seems to be missing is a global decentralised anonymous identity and trust framework. It probably requires a leap of engineering comparable to the invention of the blockchain (although I don't think that a blockchain is necessarily the model to follow here, since the data should be encrypted). Every website and app and network service seems to be reinventing the wheel here, and end up creat…

Sovrin[0] is a decentralized anonymous identity network that may be of interest.

[0] https://sovrin.org

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#245

Post by closeparen »

simonw wrote: post #55

Development environments. The amount of time and hassle I've seen lost to getting a working development environment up and running is incredible. Every time I talk to someone who's learning to program I tell them: "Setting up your development environment will be a nightmare. I have been doing this for twenty years and it's STILL a nightmare for me every time I do it. You are not alone." Docker is reasonably good here…

It’s absolutely tragic that LSP isn’t meant to work remotely, because the actual editing and code intelligence interface really needs to be local. So practically speaking the whole dev environment has to be local. I’ve used rsync type solutions for both AWS and local VMs (docker for Mac), and in the end it was always better to just get the thing running natively.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#246

Post by aaronblohowiak »

btown wrote: post #34
keenmaster wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't take software engineers as a fixed population, but rather everyone on Earth with sufficient intelligence to code well with the right no-code framework (which currently doesn't exist), then this is indeed the biggest priority. Of course, I am under no illusion that no code will work for everything, such as developing ML applications from scratch. Even then, it can be a way to interface with pre-built ML ap…

Salesforce got it partially right. To be somewhat cynical, the trick is to enable no-code, but (a) make it just borderline user-hostile enough that you foster an entire marketplace of no-code consultancies to no-code for companies too busy and frustrated to no-code themselves, and (b) ensure everything is extensible with actual code. They got (a) balanced perfectly, but (b) is somewhat lacking, and it didn't have to…

Airtable?

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#247

Post by mamcx »

lame88 wrote: post #219

A constantly cycling proliferation of different languages, frameworks, libraries, etc. that all do the same things in a different way and are most often mutually incompatible with each other and have entirely different ecosystems with their own comparative advantages but also major pitfalls. This causes tech workers’ investment in skills to get more out of shallow knowledge and trivia than on deeper concepts, creates…

I think this is a manifestation of a more bigger issue: C, C++, JS.

This happend because our foundations are shaking, and is requiere to put on top some sanity. But nothing can work because: This industry not let go of the old and bad (C, C++, JS, Bash, etc) and refuse to do a significant change.

Too much change is bad.

Too little change is bad.

Have both things at odds in a fierce battle is worse.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#248

Post by lame88 »

gdsdfe wrote: post #232
lame88 wrote: post #219

A constantly cycling proliferation of different languages, frameworks, libraries, etc. that all do the same things in a different way and are most often mutually incompatible with each other and have entirely different ecosystems with their own comparative advantages but also major pitfalls. This causes tech workers’ investment in skills to get more out of shallow knowledge and trivia than on deeper concepts, creates…

Do you work in software? It's making new things with new things that software makers better at what they do.

Sounds nice. And idealistic. The reality is at this point the newer is often not much better, or may be just a step sideways rather than forward, and therefore does not replace anything, but rather siphons off a portion of the investment in the pool of alternatives around it. The benefits tend to not justify the costs associated with skill fragmentation and time and effort needed to learn them. More concretely, im not talking about jumping from C to Java. Im talking about things like the thousand different web languages that dont need to exist at all.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#249

Post by [deleted] »

lame88 wrote: post #219

A constantly cycling proliferation of different languages, frameworks, libraries, etc. that all do the same things in a different way and are most often mutually incompatible with each other and have entirely different ecosystems with their own comparative advantages but also major pitfalls. This causes tech workers’ investment in skills to get more out of shallow knowledge and trivia than on deeper concepts, creates…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#250

Post by ryanthemadone »

zozbot234 wrote: post #169
ijpsud wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about this with a friend the other day. I don't know about the technical feasibility (RE sybil attack[0]), but if it were possible, it would have a massive impact on the web. The current state of the art (in terms of new user signup) is using phone numbers as representing unique "trustable" people, which is kind of absurd. This reminds me of how social security numbers weren't originally intended to be…

Just post a bond that is forfeited if you engage in verifiable abuse, the proceeds of which are used to compensate the victims (if applicable). Use pseudonymous identity to link any number of site-specific "identities" to that same initial posting. Real-name identity can then be optional (although some sites may still insist on it), but users in good standing are protected from "sybil" attacks because each entirely-n…

I naïve reading of your solution implies that the poor wouldn't be able to put up such a bond and would therefore be excluded from this techno utopia - where the rich would be able to create Sybil's and game systems all day long.
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