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Choose Boring Technology (2015)

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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#231

Post by hinkley »

leonardteo wrote: post #184

Getting vulnerable here for a sec and hoping that others can add their thoughts. I struggle with this. As a small-ish, bootstrapped business, the issue I commonly run into is developer retention. If we stand our ground and choose boring technology because we have limited innovation tokens and can't afford to waste them, there's the flight risk of those devs who really want to work with those new technologies. And thi…

You cannot ignore all progress, but not all motion is progress.

Technology selection is a very underappreciated and largely unreported skill set.

I think it relates to the Principle of Least Surprise. You can pick tech that has a lot of upside and isn't riddled with gotchas or demanding of eternal vigilance, or you can pick stuff that makes you feel like you're alive all the time.

The latter is risk-taking behavior. It's thrill-seeking. Several other replies exhibit disdain for this behavior, as I think we all should. These people are risking your company for cheap thrills. As one responder puts it, fuck 'em.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#232

Post by andersco »

This article reinforces one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a developer - be careful, even suspicious of shiny new things - only after the sheen has faded after extensive use and they no longer are the new coolness is it usually safe to consider them for anything other than a toy project.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#233

Post by metrokoi »

tomc1985 wrote: post #221
leonardteo wrote: post #184

Getting vulnerable here for a sec and hoping that others can add their thoughts. I struggle with this. As a small-ish, bootstrapped business, the issue I commonly run into is developer retention. If we stand our ground and choose boring technology because we have limited innovation tokens and can't afford to waste them, there's the flight risk of those devs who really want to work with those new technologies. And thi…

Can I be honest? I fucking hate developers. We're like magpies of the worst variety. How many times have I had to argue against bringing in ${NEW_TECH} or ${NEW_TECHNIQUE} because it would be more trouble than its worth. No, it doesn't look as cool engineering-wise, and yes, our work may be a little harder because of it. But then they win the argument and we implement it and hey! Those problems I told you about? They…

Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?

Developers may be the least humble type of engineers. There are many great things that we do, but we need to be taken down a peg every once in a while. Many developers are forced into this mindset out of fear of our marketable skills being made obsolete so I understand why many do this, and it is a compounding problem. Developers seek out jobs with the shiny new technology or push for their company to adopt it to be able to show that technology on their portfolio, then there are fewer positions with the boring but reliable technology and even more are forced to adopt the new technology.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#234

Post by asddubs »

non-entity wrote: post #198
scotty79 wrote: post #125

I think the problem is that not all programmers are motivated by successfully building things. Lots of us are motivated by learning things, and some are motivated by investigating and solving problems when things don't go the way they supposed to. If you pick a 'boring' technology, you have less of those two things, and you are stuck with boring process of developing one feature after the other with boring technology…

> I think the problem is that not all programmers are motivated by successfully building things. > Lots of us are motivated by learning things, and some are motivated by investigating and solving problems when things don't go the way they supposed to. I kinda realized this about myself recently, and now I'm wondering if I need to leave the field.

just switch to doing javascript

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#235

Post by nlitened »

praveen9920 wrote: post #193
leonardteo wrote: post #184

Getting vulnerable here for a sec and hoping that others can add their thoughts. I struggle with this. As a small-ish, bootstrapped business, the issue I commonly run into is developer retention. If we stand our ground and choose boring technology because we have limited innovation tokens and can't afford to waste them, there's the flight risk of those devs who really want to work with those new technologies. And thi…

If you are early stage start-up, all your employees including engineers should be onboarded with the idea rather than technology choice. If you have someone joined you for any reason other than the excitement for idea, there is higher chance that you will find them going off track too often and it will drag you back If you are mid-size company, I will assume that you can afford giving some breathing space for everyon…

There are also small software companies that are not VC-funded startups with flashy ideas — e.g. small bootstrapped consultancies and niche software shops.

In these companies you still have to hire developers for reasons beyond excitement for The Idea.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#236

Post by rubber_duck »

aphextron wrote: post #195
leonardteo wrote: post #184

Getting vulnerable here for a sec and hoping that others can add their thoughts. I struggle with this. As a small-ish, bootstrapped business, the issue I commonly run into is developer retention. If we stand our ground and choose boring technology because we have limited innovation tokens and can't afford to waste them, there's the flight risk of those devs who really want to work with those new technologies. And thi…

>"If we stand our ground and choose boring technology because we have limited innovation tokens and can't afford to waste them, there's the flight risk of those devs who really want to work with those new technologies." That's fine, let them go. There are plenty of great developers out there who just want to come to work, build the product to spec in some 'boring' reliable tech, and go home. The stack doesn't really…

>There are plenty of great developers out there who just want to come to work, build the product to spec in some 'boring' reliable tech, and go home.

No there aren't, in fact there aren't plenty of "great" (or pick any adjective related to competent) devs in general, so if you're a small shop and can't compete on wages, work conditions (tech stack included) is your only competitive edge. Because you know what there is plenty of ? Enterprise gigs that need competent people to maintain a legacy cash cow or business backbone - and working in those environments has competitive advantages compared to working in small companies - corporate pace is usually 1/2, company stability, climbing the corporate ladder - if you're a 9-5 guy these things mean a lot. Even those places need to mix in flavour of the day tech to keep their devs from leaving the mind numbing work they feed them.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#237

Post by tomc1985 »

metrokoi wrote: post #233
tomc1985 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I be honest? I fucking hate developers. We're like magpies of the worst variety. How many times have I had to argue against bringing in ${NEW_TECH} or ${NEW_TECHNIQUE} because it would be more trouble than its worth. No, it doesn't look as cool engineering-wise, and yes, our work may be a little harder because of it. But then they win the argument and we implement it and hey! Those problems I told you about? They…

Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave? Developers may be the least humble type of engineers. There are many great things that we do, but we need to be taken down a peg every once in a while. Many developers are forced into this mindset out of fear of our marketable skills being made obsolete so I understand why many do this, and it is a compounding problem. Developers seek out jobs with the shiny…

Is that fear real though? I mean there are still job listings for VBA or ColdFusion engineers if that's really your thing.

I think our problem (and my our, I mean American) is that we are too obsessed with tech. This is coming from someone who grew up obsessed with computers, and not just writing code. You can tell this is true from looking at our ads, which are always touting the shiniest newest technological marvels. Even beauty products -- they sound so sciency without actually saying anything. Tech is our dogwhistle.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#238

Post by theshrike79 »

xtracto wrote: post #186
theshrike79 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to build stuff from basic blocks with no hidden magic is the best part in Go. It's SO boring, but also very efficient. Yes, you type more words, but that's why you got the fancy clicky keyboard. You get stuff done and other people can actually understand your code, because there are no hidden gotchas, everything is just as you typed it out. Even the boring and repetitive if err != nil stuff just fades away, bu…

In 1999 when I finished my Bsc in Software Eng I loved to do my own tools instead of using stdlib or boost or other C libraries for the same reason. Now I value my time more and I prefer to focus on programming what gives value to the business I am building to.

Go isn't _that_ basic =)

There are less abstractions to hide the costly operations.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#239

Post by [deleted] »

leonardteo wrote: post #184

Getting vulnerable here for a sec and hoping that others can add their thoughts. I struggle with this. As a small-ish, bootstrapped business, the issue I commonly run into is developer retention. If we stand our ground and choose boring technology because we have limited innovation tokens and can't afford to waste them, there's the flight risk of those devs who really want to work with those new technologies. And thi…

[deleted]

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#240

Post by the_af »

dnautics wrote: post #208
the_af wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true about enterprisey patterns, which for some reason plague Java more than other languages. I think it's a flaw of the moment in time when Java became ubiquitous -- I mean, it still runs most software than many fashionable technologies these days, but it's not as dominant as it used to be -- rather than the language itself. Modern Java doesn't look like that, but indeed older software built with it did. The…

> Which for some reason plague Java more than other languages. Is the reason a mystery? Java is the language that got a multibillion dollar marketing pitch at its inception. It was designed to be in "the enterprise" from day 1.

I'm not saying it's exactly a mystery. Java had the misfortune of being ubiquitous when XP and design patterns became all the rage. Every intern using Java had to learn "patterns", and schools where teaching them too. Heavyweight frameworks like Spring (and before that, EJBs( were all the rage too. It took a lot to extricate modern Java from that situation.
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