Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Grug Brained Developer

grugbrain.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 394 posts

Re: The Grug Brained Developer

#51

Post by mgsouth »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #35
lijogdfljk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most well-intentioned "grug" developers will write software so simple that it becomes it's own form of complexity: a giant mud-ball of for-loops, while-loops, variable assignments, and other wonderful side effects. Instead of addressing complexity head-on with abstraction, "grug" will beat "galaxy brain" over the head. Hah. Related, i became disgruntled with my previous favorite language for this reason. It promote…

Alright I'll bite :) Python? Java? C? Assembly?

That would make for some interesting posts. "How X promotes wishful simplification," for various values of X. I imagine some common traits would be probably be "X makes simple things simple," with "it makes hard things look like simple ones." But there's also "X has defaults that Just Work" with "until they don't." I don't think I'd include assembly, C, or Java in those categories. Python? Maybe; "batteries included" is starting to break down. Go? Yep. Goroutines and channels usually work well for simple stuff, often for more complicated, and the core libraries follow that pattern. Model failures tend to be buried and solved when the service is turned off and back on. Rust? Don't think so; its schtik is making hard things into blockers. Web frameworks? Yes, oh very yes. Lisp? "Simple? Blink blink. Oh, you mean elegant."

Re: The Grug Brained Developer

#52

Post by nonethewiser »

agentultra wrote: post #16

Ah, the ample club of wishful thinking. There are two general ways of approaching software design (and I'm paraphrasing Tony Hoare here): 1. You can write software so simple there are obviously no errors 2. You can write software so complex there are no obvious errors One thing that escapes "grug" is that achieving 1. often requires more sophistication than their magical club allows. Most well-intentioned "grug" deve…

You're focusing on coding style but it sounds more like hes talking about business requirement.

If we are talking about coding style, then the things you have identified as actually not simple are by definition not what the article favors.

Re: The Grug Brained Developer

#55

Post by joe_the_user »

dahdum wrote: post #40
agentultra wrote: post #16

Ah, the ample club of wishful thinking. There are two general ways of approaching software design (and I'm paraphrasing Tony Hoare here): 1. You can write software so simple there are obviously no errors 2. You can write software so complex there are no obvious errors One thing that escapes "grug" is that achieving 1. often requires more sophistication than their magical club allows. Most well-intentioned "grug" deve…

As usual the truth is somewhere in the middle. I’ve seen nearly $1m in development cost and a year of time lost to the complexity demon due to big brains playing AWS Service Bingo while a competitor hired a single grug to do the same task. That single grug got it done in ~1 month for basically nothing, and without the multiple AWS service overhead it ran much faster, fewer resources, and dead simple to maintain. Bigg…

The OP's point is that being able to produce a simple solution to a complex problem only seems like the product of "refusing to be smart" from the outside. From the inside, there's always a delicate balancing act - each step involves choosing approaches that may generate complexity just in different ways. The same data used in different places in the application? What do you do? Objects? Globals? Cut-and-paste. Any of those solutions might be fully justified or might degenerate into a tangle by the time the application is done. Once, if you have a nice, simple working application, you can say "it's all just 'grug'" but that's essentially what they a call "humble brag".

Re: The Grug Brained Developer

#56

Post by kapp_in_life »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #35
lijogdfljk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most well-intentioned "grug" developers will write software so simple that it becomes it's own form of complexity: a giant mud-ball of for-loops, while-loops, variable assignments, and other wonderful side effects. Instead of addressing complexity head-on with abstraction, "grug" will beat "galaxy brain" over the head. Hah. Related, i became disgruntled with my previous favorite language for this reason. It promote…

Alright I'll bite :) Python? Java? C? Assembly?

My guess would be Go since I've heard that as a common complaint.

Re: The Grug Brained Developer

#57

Post by ImprobableTruth »

agentultra wrote: post #16

Ah, the ample club of wishful thinking. There are two general ways of approaching software design (and I'm paraphrasing Tony Hoare here): 1. You can write software so simple there are obviously no errors 2. You can write software so complex there are no obvious errors One thing that escapes "grug" is that achieving 1. often requires more sophistication than their magical club allows. Most well-intentioned "grug" deve…

I think the post actually touches on this? It doesn't say that you shouldn't abstract, just don't abstract too early.

Re: The Grug Brained Developer

#60

Post by vnorilo »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #44
frostwarrior wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the classic "only coder" mindset. Instead of being uncomfortable learning about software architecture, side effects or even pure functions, tries to solve every problem with for and while loops.

Sir, may I remind you that when you get down to it, your architecture and higher order functions are all made of branching and for and while loops, and branching and for and while loops are all made of goto.

And gotos are made of jump instructions which are made of NAND gates, transistors and silicon. Good abstraction is all about hiding the details that are not essential to the problem at hand.
Post reply on HN