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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

#231

Post by freshhawk »

bfb09 wrote: post #181
fwsgonzo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone here remembers that time they wrote a simple HTTP server, that just works, and would continue to work today. If anything, I hope that we can recognize that there has been advancements in computing. Back in the day you would be open to attacks left and right. It was the wild west back in the day. Today, you can take that tiny webserver and put it in a VM, and voila, now it doesn't matter if anyone bre…

What if 'advancements' were anything but? How would we know whether we're advancing a nascent engineering discipline in the best way possible? Is public cloud, an optimization for a certain calculus of engineering resources, the optimal form of computing delivery? There's an underlying presumption about computing progress that has weaseled its way into your thinking, and the devil of it is that there are vanishingly…

You seem unfamiliar with the mystical energy force that always ensures the direction of "progress" is always positive for everyone. It's very un-techy to not believe in this, you need to immediately forget enough social science subjects so you can get back to the purity of ignorance.

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

#232

Post by megapatch »

One should not forget that a big corporate is not made out of great people, but actually only of normal sized people... just, well, a lot of them!

If you hire a lot of people, they all will need to occupy a space each. To deserve that space, everybody needs to be either quite good... or good at faking being good.

Truly innovative things are done by great individuals. And corporates are not the natural habitat for great individuals.

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

#233

Post by flatline »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #186
dynamite-ready wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I saw it as a general lament against over-engineering. I don't think the point got lost in the super specific example... You could just as easily level similar rants against the likes of React and it's wider ecosystem, Tensorflow, Typescript (many will disagree), Docker... I'm sure others have their own bugbears. Much of this is subjective, of course. But to me, it feels like software development is trending…

TypeScript is a funny one. I love the language, but at the same time, I totally agree with the premise that it is unnecessary complexity! And yet I swear by it. I can't explain why there's not more cognitive dissonance there. JavaScript taught me to love async, then functional programming, and TypeScript taught to me to love static types. I'm now desperately wishing for a world of OCaml/Haskell, but where are you goi…

What is unnecessarily complex about TypeScript? It's JavaScript, with static typing plus type inference, and pretty nice generics. The ecosystem of modern JS surrounding it is horribly complex but TypeScript itself seems like a fairly straightforward programming language.

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

#234

Post by mcguire »

tyingq wrote: post #161
mvanga wrote: post #133

This is one weird comment section. There are people attacking the author for a statement made about CoreOS, and for some hate towards Kubernetes. The key point of the article is not really being addressed here: vested interests from large companies are able to introduce huge complexity into simple, well-designed projects. While the complexity may be good for some end that said vested interest has in mind, they are al…

Meh, having your opener call out a specific project as bullshit has that effect. Pulling the snark would have resulted in more people getting the main point.

Well, those that read the article, perhaps. Which would be...nobody?

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

#235

Post by jauco »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #188
cryptica wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's almost like there's no good representation in the open-source world for the solo developer or small team. As a solo open source developer who maintains a popular OSS project, this is 100% the case. Sometimes it feels like big corporations are actively working against us. It's almost impossible to get any coverage at all on any kind of media. No matter how much organic growth your project has. My project has b…

so what's the project?

I think it’s socketcluster.

However, i’m not quite sure what it does (it obviously does something really well, but I’m probably not precisely the target audience)

It might help adoption and re-share value if your readme starts with some problem and shows how your tool solves it. The cadence/temporal people did this really well: https://www.temporal.io/

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

#236

Post by jacques_chester »

mvanga wrote: post #133

This is one weird comment section. There are people attacking the author for a statement made about CoreOS, and for some hate towards Kubernetes. The key point of the article is not really being addressed here: vested interests from large companies are able to introduce huge complexity into simple, well-designed projects. While the complexity may be good for some end that said vested interest has in mind, they are al…

> It's almost like there's no good representation in the open-source world for the solo developer or small team.

Availability heuristic: large companies get more press. Partly because they're large and therefore more likely to attract readers for stories about them, partly because their scope is vast and so journalists know about them, and partly because they intentionally seek press for their work.

The scratch-an-itch period of mass-market OSS is long gone. If indeed it ever truly existed.

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

#237

Post by solumos »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #198
mvanga wrote: post #133

This is one weird comment section. There are people attacking the author for a statement made about CoreOS, and for some hate towards Kubernetes. The key point of the article is not really being addressed here: vested interests from large companies are able to introduce huge complexity into simple, well-designed projects. While the complexity may be good for some end that said vested interest has in mind, they are al…

But that's just the "circle of life" no matter what. Things start very simple, and then inevitably get ambitious and try to add new gizmos. Sooner or later you end up with a monster. Over and over again.

This is true - but I think the interesting (and understated) part of this argument is Big Tech's influence on the process.

Say I want to fork etcd or build a greenfield alternative - I now have to compete with (or support) the Hivemind's preferences in direction/progress. Who's to say their way is the "best" way?

I think this tension is much greater than it was 10 years ago.

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

#238

Post by gcbw3 »

flatline wrote: post #233
IggleSniggle wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TypeScript is a funny one. I love the language, but at the same time, I totally agree with the premise that it is unnecessary complexity! And yet I swear by it. I can't explain why there's not more cognitive dissonance there. JavaScript taught me to love async, then functional programming, and TypeScript taught to me to love static types. I'm now desperately wishing for a world of OCaml/Haskell, but where are you goi…

What is unnecessarily complex about TypeScript? It's JavaScript, with static typing plus type inference, and pretty nice generics. The ecosystem of modern JS surrounding it is horribly complex but TypeScript itself seems like a fairly straightforward programming language.

describe the steps to release the simplest ever code in javascript to production: write a js file, host it, done.

The same thing in TS adds at least one step (not to mention the rest of the tooling you will want)

So while a prefer it over JS, there's no arguing that it is more complex as now you require a build step for a language that only exist because people wanted a language without a build step.

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

#239

Post by mixmastamyk »

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.

There is a strict yaml alternative with edge cases removed I recommend.

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

#240

Post by specialp »

jchw wrote: post #84
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 M…

It is essentially a rant with not much substance. If this was a comment on HN it would be flagged probably. Like to hit at so many things in 3-4 paragraphs you aren't making an argument for or against something, you are just making a scattershot blast on like most of systems stuff today.
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