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Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

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Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#391

Post by raxxorraxor »

i_like_waiting wrote: post #75
theirishgoodbuy wrote: post #34

The 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 is self fulfilling prophecy at least in BI/ data world. I see everybody around me moving to cloud, without really good explanation why. Only reasonable thing I can see as an pattern is that cloud experience on top of data things gets paid 30% more. It made me consider cloud a lot. I was considering switching to cloud, just so I can put in my CV "experience with migration to cloud". For ne…

There are 10, probably more, cloud consultants per developer. Hard to argue against that.

There is nothing to say against a cloud version of your office suit but otherwise it is quite underwhelming. Short lived applications with a 90% API because the developer want to keep the door open to imprison the users once the application has captured a critical mass of users.

I host on AWS because I don't pay the fairly high invoices. Less domain and TLS maintenance for me. Personally I rent a server and host my personal stuff there including software repositories.

edit: Guess that technically would also qualify as cloud, but I think a differentiation is necessary. Cloud mostly means product x or y instead of just another hosted server.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#392

Post by aristofun »

Paradoxically we as engineers have to trust more to business people who are focused on finding the most economical and effective solution to a problem.

Engineers love to overengineer, because they can. And because it’s a lot of fun.

And then they end up shooting their own legs with unjustified complexity.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#393

Post by i_like_waiting »

arinlen wrote: post #377
i_like_waiting wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats way off. With 64gb ram we have around $50 month on hetzner yes. But from asking around the other BU with very similar size and usage to ours, somehow they are paying around $2600-5000/ month on azure

> With 64gb ram we have around $50 month on hetzner yes. A single box on Hetzner is by far not comparable to, say, using a managed service as AWS RDS. It's not even apples to oranges, and more of apples to freshly-squeezed orange juice served by a buttler. Think about it: do you get any form of fault tolerance with your single box?

Thats why I am saying that $50/ month is way off. The price for that would be much higher

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#394

Post by i_like_waiting »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #374
i_like_waiting wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats way off. With 64gb ram we have around $50 month on hetzner yes. But from asking around the other BU with very similar size and usage to ours, somehow they are paying around $2600-5000/ month on azure

Are they using Oracle or MSSQL where you're paying insane software licensing costs? With Postgres[1], you would need to be using an absolute beast of a server to be paying that much, even if you're paying the 2x premium to go month-to-month, and a low-powered machine could be around $50/month for a 200GB DB. [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/postgresql...

Yeah, its true that they are using MSSQL.

Based on link you provided, I calculated that 40gb memory would be $290 and 80gb $570 per month (in UK).

So price seems still quite steep, considering that same specs on-site would be ~$2000 one off. (8 months return on investment).

Then for this server, I honestly don't believe its easier to do maintenance in cloud, as you need to do lots of initial configuration there (be it IAM, permissions, firewall etc. ) compared to have it just in local network

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#395

Post by phendrenad2 »

"Tell me you don't work at FAANG/MAAMON without saying you don't work at FAANG/MAAMON".

Google/Meta/Amazon are the last bastions of sanity. They use stable technology that works. And they keep taking more and more of the total software market as a result. The methods of avoiding this kind of buzzword-driven development are increasingly only extant within big tech. Other companies make due with perpetual-junior developers and people who can't hack it at big tech. These companies will never develop an engineering culture, and they'll never break away from the "CTO heard about web3, and now we all must use web3, somehow" dynamic.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#396

Post by jedisct1 »

I miss the days where anybody could learn HTML/CSS/JQuery and make web pages, and Rails, or a LAMP stack was enough server-side.

Building a website today requires learning a ton of different tools, languages and frameworks. All of them being moving targets, so by the time your website is done, some of its components are already deprecated.

And you could go a long way with a $5/month shared web hosting service. Now, "the cloud" is not only super expensive, but it's also very hard to even guesstimate how much the next bill is going to be.

Most people who would have made their own website now just turn into using platforms such Squarespace, or even don't have a website any more and only rely on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#397

Post by ungamedplayer »

arinlen wrote: post #376
ungamedplayer wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source clearly does not mean packaging your own software. This casts a shadow of doubt on the rest of your valid points.

> Open source clearly does not mean packaging your own software. The packaging argument was made in the context of complying with software licenses. Responsible companies which perform due diligence on the software they run have to track the provenance of all software that ships as part of their dependency closure. If you want to ensure you're not vulnerable to lawsuits then you can't simply apt-get stuff from a PPA.…

It is your problem though, your customers are affected.

Do people successfully lawsuit their cloud providers for downtime?

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#398

Post by funcDropShadow »

garciasn wrote: post #102
i_like_waiting wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Promotion based architecture is self fulfilling prophecy at least in BI/ data world. I see everybody around me moving to cloud, without really good explanation why. Only reasonable thing I can see as an pattern is that cloud experience on top of data things gets paid 30% more. It made me consider cloud a lot. I was considering switching to cloud, just so I can put in my CV "experience with migration to cloud". For ne…

>For next person commenting that it makes sense: it doesn't with 200gb database and super predictable workload, growth and usage. Depends on the company. I've been working for marketing agencies for the last 15 years and they're generally staffed by, at most, 1 IT person who is in charge of a third-party vendor relationship that offers managed IT services. Those IT resources (internal or vendor) don't specialize in d…

> 1 IT person who is in charge of a third-party vendor relationship that offers managed IT services

That is something completely different from migrating your inhouse applications to the cloud by introducing kubernetes. I think your example show nicely that there is not one solution for everything. As an industry we have to put way more emphasis on deciding tradeoffs by understanding requirements and risks.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#399

Post by funcDropShadow »

arinlen wrote: post #376
ungamedplayer wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source clearly does not mean packaging your own software. This casts a shadow of doubt on the rest of your valid points.

> Open source clearly does not mean packaging your own software. The packaging argument was made in the context of complying with software licenses. Responsible companies which perform due diligence on the software they run have to track the provenance of all software that ships as part of their dependency closure. If you want to ensure you're not vulnerable to lawsuits then you can't simply apt-get stuff from a PPA.…

But that should apply to all readily available container images on docker hub as well, right? Conceptually that is not different from some guys PPA.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#400

Post by biorach »

tomc1985 wrote: post #324
biorach wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and someone else always jumps on with why overcomplicated cloud shit should be the solution to everything. I didn't say anything like that. the opposite in fact. Next time try reading and understanding a comment before going off like an obnoxious jerk

You didn't say it, I did. Pot, meet kettle. This "obnoxious jerk" has an axe to grind.

well stop bloody venting on me.

jerk

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