Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#1

Post by nwienert » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

Follow up question: is that complexity necessary or artificially inflated?

Note: this is a fun jab back at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34218003

Frontend feels like it gets incredible amounts of uninformed hatred here, and you could copy/paste many of the defensive replies here over there verbatim. My take is backend isn’t too complex, just sometimes over-complicated in specific cases. Just like frontend! I just wish there weren’t so many non-frontend developers in every frontend thread hating on it while obviously not being very experienced with it!

Happy new year!

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#2

Post by amalgamated_inc » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

I think it's artificial, and the reasons are ego inflation and job security. Nobody wants to admit that all their abstractions and knowledge are made-up and net-negative. But they largely are.

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#3

Post by quaintdev » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

I think the backend development is still simple it's the deployment that has grown overly complex with Kubernetes/Docker and CI/CD pipelines

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#4

Post by birdymcbird » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

worked at two big tech companies. there is perverse incentive to grow your organization. gets you to director or VP. if you engineer it goes to your promotion packet to get you promoted.

pattern i saw is teams do not build customer feature but work on “efficiency” or “cost saving” project. Ok, so you build something that other teams should use because it will save them time. Sounds very good on paper.

so you do these things to entrench your team DEEP into the tech stack. now people depend on you you use it as reason to get even more head count. ok now the engineers got their promotion but they struggle to support these teams when things not working. So they leave. they got promo, why stay?

managers now use all this ammo to ask for even more hc. it is self serving cycle. Now..development harder. harder to push new features. new people from college come. first they have imposter syndrome and think this is all great and they just not smart to get it. within few year they get it..see processes and tools are idiotic. they learn to play the same game. circle of life continue

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#5

Post by readonthegoapp » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:32 PM UTC

i think a couple of reasons:

  - 1. Nodejs
  - 2. Nodejs

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#6

Post by draw_down » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#7

Post by Raed667 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 7:49 PM UTC

readonthegoapp wrote: post #5

i think a couple of reasons: - 1. Nodejs - 2. Nodejs

I have seen much more unnecessary complexity from backend developers shoehorning GoLang microservices, kafka and k8s... Than from those who create Express.js apps

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#8

Post by potamic » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 8:01 PM UTC

Oh you sweet child, you haven't seen complexity until you have deployed J2EE services generated using WSDL, running in an OSGi container, interfaced with EJBs packaged using Ant and deployed into GlassFish, integrated with IIS running on a Windows Server.

Try finding a starter kit for that.

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#9

Post by veb » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 8:03 PM UTC

quaintdev wrote: post #3

I think the backend development is still simple it's the deployment that has grown overly complex with Kubernetes/Docker and CI/CD pipelines

hard agree. then all the choices of cloud servers, learning those, getting up to speed and actually being productive. it's good there's DevOps, but... yeah good luck explaining to pretty much any business without one that they need 'em.

> "Why can't you do it?"

Re: Ask HN: Why did back-end development explode in complexity?

#10

Post by croo » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 8:07 PM UTC

potamic wrote: post #8

Oh you sweet child, you haven't seen complexity until you have deployed J2EE services generated using WSDL, running in an OSGi container, interfaced with EJBs packaged using Ant and deployed into GlassFish, integrated with IIS running on a Windows Server. Try finding a starter kit for that.

Right? We already over the explosion. Backend development is not complex, it's mature. With spring boot + initializer + bean based configuration, REST interfaces everywhere, maven and gradle are both great what's not to like?