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Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

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Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#3

Post by ac2u »

While it's valid to say that for most software jobs you won't be having to write tree search algorithms 10 times a day, you'll still need to use the intuition and body of knowledge that solving such problems requires more often than you think, even if it doesn't present itself as a whiteboard trivia problem.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#4

Post by actinium226 »

Docker doesn't actually save time.

The thinking is that with docker you can manage your dependencies in one place, and so you don't need to spend time and headache dealing with issues like incompatible packages.

In reality, you trade that time and headache for the time and headache of dealing with docker: did you mount all the files you needed? Did you start the container with the proper command to enable debugging? How do I attach the debugger to my process inside the docker container? And personally I don't like the extra "state" I have to maintain in my head that I'm in a docker container.

My overall argument is that if the dependencies are so crazy that you're wasting time on conflicting packages, take a hard look at those dependencies and see if you really need all of them, or if you can simplify.

To be absolutely clear, docker is still great for certain use cases. For spinning up new CI machines it's fantastic and really simplifies that process in a meaningful way. But for local dev I think the advantages/disadvantages wash out and makes it either a net zero at best or negative at worst, since that "state" will always be there.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#6

Post by kbrannigan »

A lot of the complexity you see in code, tool or project are

Job-Security sub projects. At first you have a bright eyes junior dev who wants to do the right thing, change the world they said.

Little by little he realizes that documenting everything, writing easy to follow and bug free code is a great way to be out of a job.

Complex code is what gets you promoted because you have fire to put out, bugs to fix, getting pulled in meetings where you have to explain the intricate architecture.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#7

Post by kens »

My unpopular opinion is that computing is stuck in a local maximum based on technology from the 1970s.

In particular, typing into an 80x25 terminal window with unformatted fixed-width characters should be obsolete; we don't need compatibility with punch cards any more. There was a thread a week ago about displaying graphs in your terminal using ASCII graphics. This shouldn't be necessary!

Also, code shouldn't be a sequence of 80-character lines like a deck of punch cards. It makes no sense to carefully organize the order of code in a file for things that don't matter. Chunks should float around and be displayed as sensible, not tied to an arbitrary location in a file. Code should be more like a database than a flat file. (Yes, I know the arguments that flat files are better for tools like grep.) We should get out of the 1970s editor model; Emacs is from 1976 and vi from 1978.

The whole command-line operating system approach is like being stuck in the 1970s, even using the same commands. Yes, small tools composable with pipes are nice, but there must be a better approach. We have powerful graphics, but we're typing into terminal windows that simulate a Teletype.

To summarize my unpopular rant, hardware and I/O is exponentially better than the 1970s, but our programming environment is still stuck with the approaches of the 1970s. Computing needs to get out of this local maximum. For a supposedly fast-moving field, computing changes at a glacial pace.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#8

Post by kbrannigan »

kens wrote: post #7

My unpopular opinion is that computing is stuck in a local maximum based on technology from the 1970s. In particular, typing into an 80x25 terminal window with unformatted fixed-width characters should be obsolete; we don't need compatibility with punch cards any more. There was a thread a week ago about displaying graphs in your terminal using ASCII graphics. This shouldn't be necessary! Also, code shouldn't be a se…

So instead of editing and compiling text files what should we be doing instead?

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#10

Post by kbrannigan »

actinium226 wrote: post #4

Docker doesn't actually save time. The thinking is that with docker you can manage your dependencies in one place, and so you don't need to spend time and headache dealing with issues like incompatible packages. In reality, you trade that time and headache for the time and headache of dealing with docker: did you mount all the files you needed? Did you start the container with the proper command to enable debugging?…

My understanding is that the lower layer will outlive docker.

Some new dev with no understanding of how bare metal OS operates will be stuck within the limits of docker.

Like a goat who spent all it's life inside a fenced yard.

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