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Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

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Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#101

Post by mkhalil »

munk-a wrote: post #89
mkhalil wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left my last company because one of my co-devs would always do crazy hack-job things, and when I complained to them or higher-ups, the excuse was: "When?" I asked, considering she had just put up the (big) PR's and PR's ARE the time to review... My jaw dropped. Especially since I was hired on as "Lead" and had all the accountability but no actual power.

At our company no commits get into the trunk without going by another set of eyes. We're probably creeping up to mid-sized right now so those eyes can vary in stringency and reliability more so than they would have when it was just a handful of devs, but I think mandatory code reviews are a good habit to get into - so long as you empower every reviewer to be critical and make it clear that both the reviewer and dev a…

Yeah, commit's weren't going to trunk/master without the extra eyes/PR.

The commits I was told to review if I wanted to stop thecraziness were the personal ones going to the bugfix/feature branch.

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#102

Post by honkycat »

bvinc wrote: post #49
jamil7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny read, why did nobody stop him?

I tried. I held a meeting to talk about the code. I found the problems hard to predict and hard to describe. It was decided that after the meeting he would work more on making his code less hacky and more production ready. But the real answer is that our team was very siloed. No one knew what anyone else was doing. The other problem was that he was actually solving real world problems, and he was a very high performe…

It's unfortunate that in this industry, on a lot of teams, "high performer" means "sloppy coder who lets his co-workers finish their project."

The problems he encountered with his dumbass solution were EASILY foreseen by an even noob coder. What did he "get done"? How did writing his own shitty version of a database add value to the company? He is good at finishing his own pointless tasks quickly, maybe, but if I was in charge of the team he would be looking for a new job after this stunt.

Sick-to-death of these cowboys. Nothing is ever "done", the majority of expense in software development comes in during maintenance, not during initial implementation.

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#103

Post by [deleted] »

bvinc wrote: post #64
musingsole wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize but it seems hard to argue with this developer's approach then. If it met the needs of the company, particularly to the desired level at the times these features were requested, I don't think there's a valid critique of the developer's architecture beyond iT's NoT DoNe CoRrEcTlY. And still, there's a lot to be said for keeping your developer's entertained so they stick around.

I can certainly say that that's exactly the way I felt complaining about it. I felt like I was an asshole attacking him, and I don't think he liked me very much because of it. The whole thing was very uncomfortable. I didn't throw a fit. I tried to be very understanding and make suggestions. If it's any consolation, it fell on to me to maintain this code after he moved on to something else, which is why I know so muc…

[deleted]

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#104

Post by gen220 »

munk-a wrote: post #94
jack_h wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm in a similar situation at the moment. It's incredibly frustrating because during code reviews I will request changes so it's not such a broken hack job, and the response will basically be "No, it's not worth changing". At which point I'm the one "holding up development". We wasted hundreds of development hours during the last project because of this persons "inventive" code, and nobody seems to understand w…

It's hard to get more strength to push back with out of thin air. I'd encourage you to try pushing for more detailed post-mortems (if you don't already have them) and just keep an eye out on how much curtailed reviews cost the company. You also really want an advocate for code maintenance and if you don't have one of these with a loud voice there isn't a really feasible way to solve it except becoming it yourself and…

This is great advice. Just have some minor thoughts to tack on.

Post-mortems are great for many reasons. For the case of GP, one particular advantage is that they align senior peoples' understanding: we shouldn't do X again. If you have a strong narrative for why a project failed, post-mortems are a formal setting in which you can present this narrative with concrete evidence to higher-ups.

In the future, when you see warning signs that a mistake is approaching repetition, you can raise the concern up the chain, invoking the memory of the post-mortem to motivate their intervention.

I also totally agree that a sincere and high-quality code review process is required for high quality code. Your 2119 recommendation is excellent. I'd also recommend doing some reading on commit message templates that smart people follow, they've improved my commit game, big-time.

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#105

Post by liuliu »

bvinc wrote: post #16

Someone at my old company basically did this and put it into production. The first problem he encountered was that multiple connections couldn't both be using the database at a time without clobbering each other. "No problem," he thought, this is a good use case for micro services. A service sitting on top would ensure that there was only one operation being performed at a time. Next, his problem was that the databas…

It all sounds funny but the final solution is not far away except the JSON bit. FriendFeed 11 years ago first popularized the concept of storing schema-less data in MySQL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=496946. Uber did the similar thing a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251143

I've been building an open-source alternative on mobile that based on similar concept (SQLite + FlatBuffers): https://dflat.io/ SQLite own schema is already awesome, but in this way, you can have sum-types, better schema upgrade guarantees, index building can be asynchronously etc.

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#106

Post by dpedu »

russnewcomer wrote: post #33

I did something vaguely similar to this recently, and I still maintain it was a good choice. I volunteered to write a medical visit recording app for an NGO in a developing country (a friend works with the NGO and asked me if I would help), and they have almost no budget, no guarantees of internet connectivity when their folks are in the field, and the likelihood that they may be using this software for years. So I w…

How did you get involved with this kind of work?

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#107

Post by honkycat »

bvinc wrote: post #64
musingsole wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize but it seems hard to argue with this developer's approach then. If it met the needs of the company, particularly to the desired level at the times these features were requested, I don't think there's a valid critique of the developer's architecture beyond iT's NoT DoNe CoRrEcTlY. And still, there's a lot to be said for keeping your developer's entertained so they stick around.

I can certainly say that that's exactly the way I felt complaining about it. I felt like I was an asshole attacking him, and I don't think he liked me very much because of it. The whole thing was very uncomfortable. I didn't throw a fit. I tried to be very understanding and make suggestions. If it's any consolation, it fell on to me to maintain this code after he moved on to something else, which is why I know so muc…

You are never an asshole for telling the truth.

I've dealt with this before, it is a form of gas-lighting. Some people are good at making everyone else into a bully when THEY are the actual bully. Like the kid who keeps splashing you in a pool, but runs off and cries and tells when you splash them back.

Standing up for yourself sometimes makes you look/feel like an asshole. That doesn't mean you are wrong or that you shouldn't do it.

edit: Check out the book "Radical Candor" if you regularly struggle with expressing negative feedback

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#108

Post by meddlepal »

xienze wrote: post #66
boynamedsue wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to get a little laugh from this, but congrats to the guy for exploring. Now he knows first-hand the inordinate challenge and can describe it in detail, but more importantly avoid these hard-learned patterns later.

> but more importantly avoid these hard-learned patterns later. Depends, I’ve known people who have gone through similar experiences and still poo-poo all those “unnecessarily bloated” solutions like a proper database.

I worked with someone that was keen to use reductionist logic and arguments...

we ended up with a lot of shitty solutions to problems that were hard to maintain, hard to extend, and hard to use because the more "complex" solution was really just a fancy version of a folder and some text files.

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#109

Post by gen220 »

mkhalil wrote: post #101
munk-a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At our company no commits get into the trunk without going by another set of eyes. We're probably creeping up to mid-sized right now so those eyes can vary in stringency and reliability more so than they would have when it was just a handful of devs, but I think mandatory code reviews are a good habit to get into - so long as you empower every reviewer to be critical and make it clear that both the reviewer and dev a…

Yeah, commit's weren't going to trunk/master without the extra eyes/PR. The commits I was told to review if I wanted to stop thecraziness were the personal ones going to the bugfix/feature branch.

This might be a separate issue! :)

Many good companies enforce a no-origin-branches policy, with rare and well-justified exceptions. Because, used as you describe, a "feature branch" is just a future massive diff in disguise (when it's eventually merged), and massive diffs are a big no-no because they're a huge pain to iterate on via code review.

Re: Json-Base – Database built as JSON files

#110

Post by badsectoracula »

bvinc wrote: post #16

Someone at my old company basically did this and put it into production. The first problem he encountered was that multiple connections couldn't both be using the database at a time without clobbering each other. "No problem," he thought, this is a good use case for micro services. A service sitting on top would ensure that there was only one operation being performed at a time. Next, his problem was that the databas…

> Next, his problem was that the database would get corrupt sometimes when something bad happened in the middle of writing the file.

I'm not sure i understand how this can happen... unless you try to update JSON in-place (which is a very bad idea for any text-based format), what you do is encode/write the entire JSON from scratch. So either the file is written properly or it isn't written.

Honestly from the entire message it doesn't sound like JSON was a bad idea but that your coworker didn't know what he was doing and if he was doing something else then he'd still be doing big mistakes.

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