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Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

roguelazer.com

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Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#81

Post by Nextgrid »

pm90 wrote: post #54
dijit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This guy used to run infra at uber and was incredibly salty about every single new technology. There were a lot of bad ones, but every conversation was about as constructive, free of evidence, and bitter as this blog post. I'm going to assume you're a developer? Infra people are usually much more apprehensive to take on new technology. Crucially I would describe classically trained sysadmins as 'pessimists to the c…

The apprehensiveness of sysadmins May have been justified in the world 5 years ago but today it sounds somewhat out of place. Note that critically evaluating new technologies is still an important skill and many infrastructure people I work with are extremely cautious about adopting new tech without spiking/getting to know it. But the sysadmins with the penchant for saying no is probably one of the reasons the devops…

> the devops movement actually kicked off

And this is why every single project out there is now a house of cards (or should I say house of YAML files) using insanely complicated technologies (like Kubernetes) with very "interesting" failure modes to say the least.

This attitude works today because of engineering-driven-development; the whole purpose of engineering is engineering and business priorities took a backseat in favor of buzzwords on the careers page and an obligatory "engineering blog" (describing how they solve self-inflicted problems), however when it comes to reliability and solving problems a large majority of projects can get away with much simpler, old-school technologies.

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#82

Post by philosopher1234 »

alpb wrote: post #35

Author is really good at discrediting themselves straight off the bat in one sentence: > for a ~~bullshit~~ unsuccessful project called CoreOS Container Linux that was EOL'd several years ago CoreOS was actually quite successful to me as an outside observer. It had decent paid user base as well as people using it without paying. It has showed people that Chrome OS can be used to build atomically updating host OS with…

Could you share some info about the switch to gRPC, not for the authors benefit, but for the rest of HN? As someone not familiar with this story, I’d be very curious for your insights!

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#83

Post by Analemma_ »

calpaterson wrote: post #40
mooted1 wrote: post #18

bai

If you dislike the article, go ahead and say why. Leaving negative personal comments about the person who wrote it approximates your own comments: unconstructive, free of evidence and bitter

Given that Uber is infamous for its extreme NIH syndrome, unnecessarily reinventing the wheel and spending enormous amounts of dev effort to create internal versions of products that already exist, I think it's relevant to the article to point out that the author almost probably had a key role in that culture, and what his philosophy leads to if taken unchecked.

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#84

Post by jchw »

alpb wrote: post #35

Author is really good at discrediting themselves straight off the bat in one sentence: > for a ~~bullshit~~ unsuccessful project called CoreOS Container Linux that was EOL'd several years ago CoreOS was actually quite successful to me as an outside observer. It had decent paid user base as well as people using it without paying. It has showed people that Chrome OS can be used to build atomically updating host OS with…

I want to make constructive comments about this blog post, but the way it conducts itself makes doing so extremely difficult because nothing about it is constructive. This is troublesome for HN - I almost wish I could flag it for being impossible to discuss without turning into a flame war. It feels like several disjointed complaints based on a desire to jam any and all inconveniences into a unified narrative about Modern Software and Google. Dismissing CoreOS is the opener, but there’s almost nothing on the page that doesn’t wave red flags in some way, and I’m trying desperately to be open and objective.

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#86

Post by ddevault »

jiqiren wrote: post #67
ddevault wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a single piece of good software from Google.

The Go Language.

Go was made by a small group of smart people with debatable loyalty to Google. Google just ran with it, and they haven't done a great job with it since.

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#87

Post by _jal »

gnur wrote: post #23

It's mostly a rant about someone not accepting that extra performance can come at the cost of complexity. While I could argue with all the points that he's making, my main counterpoint is this: junior devs don't care that their http/2 server uses way more "complex" code then their http/1 server, it's just a flag away (or in most cases, automatic). Senior devs worth their salt also don't care, if I design an applicati…

I must have read an entirely different article. The one I read was about simple tools being redesigned for environments most people don't work in.

I also disagree with much of the rest of that, but the clouds are getting sick of me today.

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#89

Post by ddevault »

jonfw wrote: post #77
ddevault wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a single piece of good software from Google.

Gmail, google maps, and google docs are all excellent

Gmail sucks. They use it as a vehicle for anti-competitive "standards" and it's needlessly difficult to deliver mail to. Their new JavaScript-riddled frontends (which they seem to develop and then shrug off every couple of years) have awful performance and are terrible at doing what has ultimately a very simple task for 30 years.

Google Maps is fine. OSM is superior technically but Google Maps only wins because it has access to better data. It's not an example of great engineering, it's just okay.

Google Docs is pretty good. At least it was, the last time I used it was several years ago. I can't comment on the code, which is mainly what I'm commenting on in this thread: their engineering quality. Throw enough monkeys at a typewriter and maybe Google Docs comes out, but who knows what it looks like on the inside.

Re: Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad

#90

Post by ixtli »

jonfw wrote: post #70
ixtli wrote: post #47

I run k8s in production and I think this is a really bizarre axe to grind that sort of smells like someone who got upset by how steep the kubernetes learning curve is. Which, in a way, is understandable. > 1) Add hundreds of new failure modes to your software In my entirely anecdotal experience, it removes error modes. It turns out that just because k8s offers a feature (it offers many!) doesn't mean you're required…

What's wrong with the YAML? It's easy to read and write, concise, and generally has sane defaults meaning you don't have to be overly verbose.

You know i actually agree with you but, as a manager of other engineers, people never stop complaining about having to edit large amounts of YAML that describe complex objects. At a certain point im forced to acknowledge that its just not ergonomic. Now, I will say that perhaps whats actually happening is the objects that the describe are so complex and numerous that the problem is actually that you need better tools, not that YAML as a format is bad. YAML as used to configure, say Open API specifications, is something people always make my problem. I don't really know why this is because I don't have an issue hacking this stuff up in VIM but people really just don't seem to like it.
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