Agree with everything except the monorepo comment. The polyrepos I've experienced were more complicated than the monorepos
Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
41–50 of 430 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#42It’s hard for managers sometimes to keep this stuff out even if they want to. Engineers like to play with tools and always always always over-engineer.
I try hard to walk my talk here but I catch myself doing it too. Simplicity is much harder than complexity. It requires more thought and deeper conceptual integration. Right now I am rethinking some older things and trying very hard not to second system effect it.
On top of this you have an industry pushing this stuff and cloud vendors who love the added cost it brings from managed services and more overhead. Cloud makes money off complexity. Makes it harder to move too which improves lock in.
Lastly you have the fact that our industry is cash flush. There has been little need to trim the fat. Just raise more VC or add more billable SaaS or… we’ll crypto comes with its own casino revenue.
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#43The way I look at it is: there are more tools in the toolbox than ever before. Which makes our judgement (the thing they really pay us for) even more important. Kubernetes, for example, is a specific solution to a specific problem. The solution is complex but so is the problem. If k8s give you the right trade-offs for your situation, then it’s not busy work. Of course, there are plenty of project where judgement Is t…
This was very well put. +1
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#44Nim is easy to use but performance. I'm releasing a (web) development platform for it this month. Just getting the code ready.
I don't believe the issue being addressed is a lack of web development platforms here.
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#45The way I look at it is: there are more tools in the toolbox than ever before. Which makes our judgement (the thing they really pay us for) even more important. Kubernetes, for example, is a specific solution to a specific problem. The solution is complex but so is the problem. If k8s give you the right trade-offs for your situation, then it’s not busy work. Of course, there are plenty of project where judgement Is t…
"promotion-based architecture" aka "CV-driven architecture" :)
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#46> Rust for CRUD apps? Are all CRUD API’s insensitive to performance? Correctness?
No, but Rust is a low productivity, high formality language; one needs to make a tradeoff whether it's really that important. Given that most CRUD services are just a layer on top of a database.
This is the reality of software development; you have a budget and you have a goal. If all your budget goes up on making it correct without finishing it, you have a problem.
Anyway, it's just a CRUD app, it doesn't have to be as formal.
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#47Yes, but it has very little to do with any of the things you mentioned. Software became so prevalent that it became a mantra, "Software is eating the world" but people in IT have little to no choice in what's put on the plate. They've been convinced that positions of responsibility and authority are bad and should be left to the MBA's. Eschewed most industry groups that provide some semblance of protection that nearl…
> They've been convinced that positions of responsibility and authority are bad and should be left to the MBA's.
Meh. From my experience, many developers actively don't want to go into management, because usually your whole day is filled with management crap and you can't go and actually code any more. And developers who do switch to management often end up as miserable bosses because their bosses don't care about "leadership trainings".
Additionally, many companies have the non-management track end at senior level, which means zero career progression for those who do not wish to transition to management.
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#48what you’re referring to is called cargo-culting
small companies copy their technical and even hiring decisions from behemoths like Google
why? market powers!
the unfortunate reality, is that these companies can’t compete elsewhere, so they use hype technology that allows them to better market themselves (on the said conferences for example)
the employees can also use this opportunity to put “managed Kubernetes cluster” on their resumes to get more job offers
solution for you would be to find a company that doesn’t focus on technology, but on the problem itself
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#49The complexity caused the variety, not the other way around. Networked systems are inherently complex. Most of the technologies you mention are attempts to solve that complexity in some way, and the ones that stuck ended up being ideal for specific use-cases but not others.
The industry trends towards the most useful solution, not the simplest one. React isn’t internally simple, but it killed the frontend JS framework experiments which used to come out daily because it really established a useful paradigm that covers a lot of the web GUI usecases.
The process is messy but it’s not illogical
Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?
#50>There are overly complicated solutions to simple problems
You sure about that? Sometimes the seemingly simple problems are quite complicated. Partly because we are building software for a world that is fraught with (security) landmines.
But point taken, sometimes you can overcomplicate the architecture.
>Distributed systems? Kubernetes? Rust for CRUD apps? Blockchain, NoSql, crypto, micro-frontends and the list goes on and on.
Each of those are particular tools for particular problems (though I'm not sure why Rust for CRUD apps is so terrible).
>moving away from python (because its too "slow");
Not only is it slow, but the lack of compiler support for typing leads to an inordinate amount of (stupid) runtime problems. I say this because I recently inherited an entire inventory of python software built up over the years at my current employer. Right now, I have a bug backlog full of runtime blow-ups (dating back years) because of careless typing. Coming from the unsexy world of C# and Java, still trying to see why Python would ever be used for anything but scripting and (maybe) prototyping - it's slow as molasses and no compiler support.