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Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

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Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#21

Post by lamontcg »

Zigurd wrote: post #12
DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat me to it

"Second system syndrome" is what came to my mind. But I'm wicked old.

Actually its not going to be that.

That's when you've got something small that works and the rewrite is a bloated mess of every feature you could dream of.

This is the case where you've got an accumulation of over a decade of technical debt and Chesterton's Fences and someone who has no idea why the code is the way that it is inherits it and decides to rewrite it, and not knowing which constraints are necessary and which aren't they throw away most of them and find out the hard way that the problem isn't actually that simple.

It is almost the inverse of the second system syndrome.

But it is abundantly clear that Elon doesn't even know how to have this conversation.

Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#22

Post by bmitc »

moosedev wrote: post #20

Elon sure reminds me of an inexperienced, over-confident (or "just enough experience to be dangerous") software engineer at times. One who has enough experience to see flaws in an existing (or "legacy") system and feel they could do better if they just rewrote it all from scratch, but not enough experience (or too much hubris) to know how well that does or does not go in practice. He may be right, of course. I'm just…

We shouldn't beat around the bush. Musk has shown very few times that he has any idea what he is talking about. His tweet sounds identical to some middle manager's sentiment you'd get at some huge conglomerate trying to make a name for themself after taking over a group.

And it should be noted that he's responding to another tech billionaire who fancies himself as an oracle as well. This is like throwing around verbal spars at the water cooler at the local squash club.

Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#26

Post by [deleted] »

bmitc wrote: post #22
moosedev wrote: post #20

Elon sure reminds me of an inexperienced, over-confident (or "just enough experience to be dangerous") software engineer at times. One who has enough experience to see flaws in an existing (or "legacy") system and feel they could do better if they just rewrote it all from scratch, but not enough experience (or too much hubris) to know how well that does or does not go in practice. He may be right, of course. I'm just…

We shouldn't beat around the bush. Musk has shown very few times that he has any idea what he is talking about. His tweet sounds identical to some middle manager's sentiment you'd get at some huge conglomerate trying to make a name for themself after taking over a group. And it should be noted that he's responding to another tech billionaire who fancies himself as an oracle as well. This is like throwing around verba…

[deleted]

Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#27

Post by mrhands556 »

bmitc wrote: post #22
moosedev wrote: post #20

Elon sure reminds me of an inexperienced, over-confident (or "just enough experience to be dangerous") software engineer at times. One who has enough experience to see flaws in an existing (or "legacy") system and feel they could do better if they just rewrote it all from scratch, but not enough experience (or too much hubris) to know how well that does or does not go in practice. He may be right, of course. I'm just…

We shouldn't beat around the bush. Musk has shown very few times that he has any idea what he is talking about. His tweet sounds identical to some middle manager's sentiment you'd get at some huge conglomerate trying to make a name for themself after taking over a group. And it should be noted that he's responding to another tech billionaire who fancies himself as an oracle as well. This is like throwing around verba…

At his level who has had consistently more or the same level of success doing something similar to him? I don’t understand all the Elon hate lately outside of people being bias for the sake of the narrative.

Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#28

Post by about3fitty »

moosedev wrote: post #20

Elon sure reminds me of an inexperienced, over-confident (or "just enough experience to be dangerous") software engineer at times. One who has enough experience to see flaws in an existing (or "legacy") system and feel they could do better if they just rewrote it all from scratch, but not enough experience (or too much hubris) to know how well that does or does not go in practice. He may be right, of course. I'm just…

1 point by about3fitty 0 minutes ago | root | parent | next | edit | delete [–]

I’m of the opposite opinion. At this stage, he has heard the counter arguments. He is smart enough to know what he is doing.

I genuinely think he is making these statements to wind us up, though I don’t guess as to why.

Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#29

Post by bmitc »

drks91 wrote: post #24
bmitc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be a legitimate strategy. Hard rules in software rarely work.

Any successful example?

I've done it myself several times, but of course on projects small enough for a single developer. I also think the approach of rewriting bits and pieces over time works. You can identify pieces of the old code base that has well-defined behavior and can be split off with a well-defined interface between the new and old code. This has the added benefit of both needing to understand the old codebase and what you'd ideally want from a new codebase.

Re: Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

#30

Post by solresol »

fwlr wrote: post #16

Moonshot project: stick half a dozen devs in an office and have them rewrite Twitter’s backend in Rust, and stick another half a dozen devs in the next office and have them rewrite Twitter’s frontend in Elixir/Phoenix.

This would be the most beautiful experiment.

Somehow we would need to track to two code bases for a decade afterwards and see which was the better choice.

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