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Phrases in computing that might need retiring

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Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#41

Post by madsbuch »

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…

The problem with tech dept is that it instills some kind of linearity -- you can pay it off whenever.

Often times "tech dept" comes from the fact that we do not truly know what to build. Hence we use the simplest measure to satisfy what requirements there are. Call it the "Occam's razor of software development".

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#42

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

Except it doesn't. It's a one-sided and misleading concept.

The problem is usually finding a balance between "Let's hack some suicidally awful crap together quickly to see if we even have a market and then fix it when we have real income, except everyone knows we won't so it will be a permanent drag on the business" and "Let's build a beautiful extendable maintainable paragon of elegance and purity and ignore the fact that it'll take three years when we have six months of runway."

Too far in either direction will kill you. The sweet spot is between those extremes, and finding it is extremely difficult.

It's unhelpful that there isn't a word to describe aiming for that balance, never mind hitting it.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#43

Post by edrxty »

papito wrote: post #37
bzxcvbn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Precisely

You can make literally anything work with enough arduinos and duct tape, but should you?

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#44

Post by Maxion »

lbriner wrote: post #36

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.

But isn't that just a sysadmin? Or am I old for calling tiktoks vines?

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#45

Post by papito »

throwntoday wrote: post #28

I wouldn't mind if "blockchain" as a buzzword died out. A blockchain is almost never the solution to a problem. And I don't even understand the point if it isn't decentralized.

"Blockchain" is more of a punchline now than an actual serious word used in technology.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#46

Post by InCityDreams »

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?

Genuine question. Why bother downvoting, and not just move along? Perhaps there should be a button for 'disagree strongly'.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#47

Post by EntropyIsAHoax »

As a "DevOps Engineer" I strongly agree we need to stop using the term, at least as a job title. Where I work, I help automate our infrastructure management and develop tools that make it easier for product engineers to do DevOps, such as making monitoring solutions easier, injecting deployment credentials into CI/CD pipelines, abstracting certain common but complex architectures, etc...

But at least half of the recruitors who contact me clearly expect me to be a glorified sysadmin who codes maybe one day a month. It's bad enough that I changed my job title on LinkedIn to "Software Engineer (DevOps)" which seems to have helped a little bit.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#49

Post by lilyball »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #42
ghayes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except it doesn't. It's a one-sided and misleading concept. The problem is usually finding a balance between "Let's hack some suicidally awful crap together quickly to see if we even have a market and then fix it when we have real income, except everyone knows we won't so it will be a permanent drag on the business" and "Let's build a beautiful extendable maintainable paragon of elegance and purity and ignore the fac…

It's not one-sided though. Debt is often a very useful tool. You take on debt now because you can do more productive things with the money that will be worth more than the payments you have to make on it later. This is an extremely apt description of technical debt. Often times people will make bad decisions about what debt to take on, and the same is true for technical debt, and often times people will overestimate the value they'll get out of the debt, which is again true for technical debt, but debt is still a useful tool, and technical debt is a useful compromise you make to ship software.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#50

Post by Hamcha »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #42
ghayes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except it doesn't. It's a one-sided and misleading concept. The problem is usually finding a balance between "Let's hack some suicidally awful crap together quickly to see if we even have a market and then fix it when we have real income, except everyone knows we won't so it will be a permanent drag on the business" and "Let's build a beautiful extendable maintainable paragon of elegance and purity and ignore the fac…

How is debt not accurate here?

You wanna build something? You may over-invest (too much debt), invest just right (manageable debt) or wait until it's too late (the paragon you mention).

Debt is a nasty word and it's meant to be but like some other bad things if you know what you can manage you can come out on top. People take loans all the time because they want to achieve that sweet spot you mention.

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