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

Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 48 posts

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

#31

Post by bmitc »

mrhands556 wrote: post #27
bmitc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't equate entrepreneurial success with knowing what you're talking about. Even Elon's entrepreneurial success is debatable with there being many stories of SpaceX and Tesla being successful despite Musk.

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

#32

Post by eNV25 »

mrhands556 wrote: post #27
bmitc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably plenty, they're just not famous.

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

#33

Post by motoxpro »

about3fitty wrote: post #28
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.

I think maybe the service just takes more people than he thought.

You could make the argument that "it shouldn't take as many people as it did" i.e. the code quality "is bad"

Or you could say "this is hard and takes people to make sure it works."

You will always find that "the code is brittle" as you get rid of more and more people if your assumption is that the service should run with no oversight and no people

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

#34

Post by KptMarchewa »

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.

His moonshot would be python

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

#35

Post by twelve40 »

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?

many years ago I worked on the windows firewall team at microsoft. it was common practice to get to a certain milestone of a project, then purposely ditch the code and start from scratch. I haven't seen this practice since then, but that part of windows was one of the least hated-on at the time.

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

#36

Post by Zigurd »

lamontcg wrote: post #21
Zigurd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 w…

In a sane acquisition a list of issues would have some out in technical dd. Not that Elon would have listened to anyone doing technical dd.

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

#37

Post by jiveturkey »

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…

commonly called the novice expert

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

#38

Post by ojkelly »

bmitc wrote: post #29
drks91 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 idea…

This is one of the foundational concepts behind microservices.

A service small enough that a team or engineer can rewrite it in a cycle/sprint.

When it’s bigger than that, you have the compounding effects of other systems that interact with each other.

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

#39

Post by netsharc »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #13

Go for it. You have a lot of money to burn. Full-Scale Disaster.

In a comedy world, the results of Twitter rewrite won't be a website where people can publish 280 characters at a time, but a software that will be able to drive a car autonomously...

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

#40

Post by quantified »

mrhands556 wrote: post #27
bmitc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His level of what?

Wealth? There's like 0-3 others. So what? Lottery winners show no more skill than anyone else.

Visibility? Well, you've got Zuck (no what's-her-face in hiding from Meta anymore), not Jack Dorsey anymore, no Sergey or Larry or Bill or Steve... I can't think of anyone outside of tech. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, they're more visible and seem to have a hard time keeping things together, especially since end of Bush, but they didn't fire half their workforce and make their operations break down frequently. I give Clinton and Obama decent marks for leaving the economy in a good shape for their successors to screw up. Jimmy Carter had great success in his endeavors.

Eptitude? I think the ept have avoided getting snared in awful deals like Elon stuck his finger into.

I think we're at the bottom of the second inning of this game of Twitter-ball. Let's see how it goes from here now that the team is down to a bare roster.

Post reply on HN