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

Phrases in computing that might need retiring

sicpers.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 291 posts

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#31

Post by silisili »

fishbacon wrote: post #25
silisili wrote: post #17

Oh man, I wish most of this would go away. RE: Agile 'We have to find a new way to discuss the idea that maybe we focus on the working software and not on the organisational bureaucracy, and that way does not involve the word…' Which is rather hilarious, because the only people I ever hear use the word agile are the beaurocrats. RE: DevOps, I still don't know what it actually means. When I first heard the term, it wa…

DevOps has in my experience become full stack + server maintenance + misc tool development.

At my company, it's now just a term for the person who has full AWS access.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#33

Post by Ozzie_osman »

doctor_eval wrote: post #2

> "Agile: Nope, this one’s in the bin, I’m afraid. It used to mean “not waterfall” and now means “waterfall with a status meeting every day and an internal demo every two weeks”. We have to find a new way to discuss the idea that maybe we focus on the working software and not on the organisational bureaucracy…" Yup. :-(

Well, it's very difficult (and probably mis-guided) to throw away waterfall completely. In reality, most "not waterfall" approaches are just "smaller waterfalls" with less formailty. You still need some semblance of requirements (what you want to build), some amount of design, you need to implement, you need to test, and you need to maintain.

Those steps could take months, weeks, days, hours, or minutes. And they could require a lot of written documentation with format reviews, a few discussions between people, or some thinking.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#34

Post by Juliate »

ghayes wrote: post #15
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

Right, and "debt" is a beautiful word here. It accurately describes receiving the value today, but then owing that time back, with interest, in the future.

I'd argue that "debt" instills an unrelated meaning. As well as "legacy" and "debt" mean different things, yet may be related in some situations.

What is technical debt today might actually be (considered) no debt at all later on (or even from the beginning, in the extreme case you're building something for once only), for multiple reasons.

The context matters a lot, and begets a more elaborate discourse than just "that's technical debt", which in itself means little of the possible or mandated actions.

(edited to refine)

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#35

Post by drewrv »

ghayes wrote: post #15
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

Right, and "debt" is a beautiful word here. It accurately describes receiving the value today, but then owing that time back, with interest, in the future.

Tech debt is one of the few metaphors I love because it’s so accurate. What a lot of engineers struggle with is that manageable levels of debt is fine for a business and in fact superior to being cash constrained.

Some forms of debt are a headache if the business goes south but tech debt can be ignored if the software project goes nowhere. So the “terms” are good.

Rather than complaining about tech debt, one should communicate the advantages of paying it down or the risks of taking on too much. But the metaphor works and simply referring to “debt” will not dissuade people because a bit of debt is fine.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#36

Post by lbriner »

I agree that DevOps is often misued but the example is misleading. Many organisations might recruit a DevOps Engineer who can build out a CD pipeline and train up existing Devs on how Devops works, how the tooling works and how the principles of DevOps work.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#37

Post by papito »

bzxcvbn wrote: post #9
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

It's called a short-sighted decision.

The job of a good engineer is to know which type of debt is good under the circumstances, and which debt is "toxic".

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#38

Post by papito »

rendall wrote: post #7

If this were a comment on HN, I would give it one of my rare downvotes. It's dismissive and negative without any compensating value or positivity. Maybe suggestions of terms to use?

Of all the stuff that is happening with technology today, especially with social media, this is what triggers you?

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#39

Post by arcade79 »

abainbridge wrote: post #10

Sinister used to mean left handed. "A shambles" used to mean a slaughterhouse. Sanction used to mean allow, now it means not allow. It is fine for words to change meaning, even to their own opposite. Natural language has done that forever. Edit: you're all right, sanction has both meanings.

I like this definition, from wikipedia:

"Pragmatic sanction, historically, a sovereign's solemn decree which addresses a matter of primary importance and which has the force of fundamental law"

It has just been corrupted in various ways. It's no longer only a sovereign's decree, but any authority. It doesn't necessarily have primary importance. And the force it carries depends on the authority.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#40

Post by falcor84 »

silisili wrote: post #17

Oh man, I wish most of this would go away. RE: Agile 'We have to find a new way to discuss the idea that maybe we focus on the working software and not on the organisational bureaucracy, and that way does not involve the word…' Which is rather hilarious, because the only people I ever hear use the word agile are the beaurocrats. RE: DevOps, I still don't know what it actually means. When I first heard the term, it wa…

Regarding DevOps, a major aim was to embed operational concerns into all stages of development. In that sense, it was a massive success; a developer cannot anymore just say "here's a binary that I made on my machine, make it work in production", throw it towards ops and sign off.
Post reply on HN