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The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

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Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#71

Post by DJBunnies »

mdgrech23 wrote: post #62
Scubabear68 wrote: post #59

It depends on your personality. Some people are “serial starters”. They have enormous creative fire, feel a burning need to create something new, and once it starts taking form and people start using it, they get bored and move on. Others are better finishers. They will patiently build out the core until all the required bells and whistles and niceties are there. It’s very rare to someone good at both, such as Linus…

I feel like these people make for terrible for coworkers. You'll build out a nice class or something that is being widely used and providing tons of value only to discover for a new key component they didn't use your class, built their own to no real advantage. It's obnoxious. Another example. I did a proof of concept, demoed it to the big bosses. Got approval for it to be built. I'm not so much at the individual con…

Did you ask why

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#72

Post by mcv »

> I really, really don’t like greenfield projects. There are too many options. Too many tools to chose and decisions to be made. All of the code has to be written, including the boilerplate and the boring stuff. Thanks but no thanks. Give me a messy project instead.

You know you can make your greenfield project messy, right?

Over the past few years, I discovered I really enjoy projects that are uncertain, where nobody knows yet how it's all supposed to work and what the end result is going to look like. Projects where you try stuff only to throw it away. I've done projects like that, and they were my favourite projects ever. I love to experiment, crank our a quick proof of concept, only to rewrite it in a different framework and refactor it several times over the first year.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#73

Post by sublinear »

> I’d rather have a messy bit of code that has a bug in it than an empty file.

There's at least a third scenario that busts this dichotomy and also isn't the overconfident junior dev nonsense in some of the other comments. I've seen enough of those messy bugs and worked on similar enough projects that are far better put together. I just want to replicate their success. I'll be shamelessly stealing ideas under the guise of "best practices" and I won't worry about the outcome because I already know. The code from me will be easy to read and well documented and nobody will notice apart from the suspicious lack of drama, as it should be.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#74

Post by heavyset_go »

> I really, really don’t like greenfield projects. There are too many options. Too many tools to chose and decisions to be made. All of the code has to be written, including the boilerplate and the boring stuff. Thanks but no thanks. Give me a messy project instead.

I have a hard time relating. Some of my favorite gigs were where I got to come in and design projects from the ground up. It's where you get to exercise an engineering mindset, where you're adhering to constraints while trying to meet requirements and setting the groundwork for potentially years of contribution, change and adaption.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#75

Post by majormajor »

chefandy wrote: post #5

I get that but I couldn't be more different: I love greenfield projects. I find designing a robust, performant and reliable architecture to be the most interesting part of the process.

> I get that but I couldn't be more different: I love greenfield projects. I find designing a robust, performant and reliable architecture to be the most interesting part of the process.

If you're working on a greenfield project there's a very high chance that your "robust, performant and reliable" is someone else's tech debt once people need different things from the system in a few years... And then the more clever that original work, the harder the rework.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#76

Post by intelVISA »

heavyset_go wrote: post #74

> I really, really don’t like greenfield projects. There are too many options. Too many tools to chose and decisions to be made. All of the code has to be written, including the boilerplate and the boring stuff. Thanks but no thanks. Give me a messy project instead. I have a hard time relating. Some of my favorite gigs were where I got to come in and design projects from the ground up. It's where you get to exercise…

Greenfield projects are the Elysian fields for makers. It definitely seperates the builders from the importers. No shade on the latter, a job's a job to most.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#77

Post by intelVISA »

sph wrote: post #54
sodapopcan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta look into Hetzner. Their servers are in the EU no? Or are they viable for an NA app? I know I can google this stuff but just interested in your high level experience since you have the same stack.

They're German but AFAIK they recently opened a datacenter in the US East and one in US West. They're much cheaper than the other offerings. I pay €35/mo for a 32GB RAM, 8-core, 2x SSD dedicated server with unlimited traffic. Elixir flies on that.

Kinda expensive when I checked their offerings.

They charge €40pcm for an i7-4770, 32GB RAM, 2x SSD which can be bought for around €100 from any IT surplus (given it's around a decade old) and thrown in a libre/GPL colo at your local hacker space for single digits pcm.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#78

Post by jkhdigital »

mastax wrote: post #11
catchnear4321 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ever completed a project to find out 6+ months later that it was never used, for reasons? working on an existing mess with outstanding complaints at least better guarantees that it is a valued mess. some environments, that’s not about comfort, it is about survival.

My dad spent the first 12 years of his career working on the Advanced Gun System for the DDG1000 destroyer program. Never got used. I can understand why he has such a disdain for government waste.

The entire DDG1000 program was a boondoggle. An active-duty friend of mine who is well-connected in naval strategy circles keeps repeating that the Navy won’t pull its head out of its ass until a few large hulls end up at the bottom of the South China Sea.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#79

Post by markatto »

intelVISA wrote: post #77
sph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're German but AFAIK they recently opened a datacenter in the US East and one in US West. They're much cheaper than the other offerings. I pay €35/mo for a 32GB RAM, 8-core, 2x SSD dedicated server with unlimited traffic. Elixir flies on that.

Kinda expensive when I checked their offerings. They charge €40pcm for an i7-4770, 32GB RAM, 2x SSD which can be bought for around €100 from any IT surplus (given it's around a decade old) and thrown in a libre/GPL colo at your local hacker space for single digits pcm.

That’s not their best hardware deal, but you also have to understand that you are paying for rack space, electricity, bandwidth, on-site staff for repairs, etc. They are actually absurdly inexpensive compared to competitors.

Re: The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects

#80

Post by olvy0 »

I'm the same, as I keep telling to my coworkers and internal customers. Just give me a long list of bugs to fix and I'll be happy. But given a completely new project I get into analysis paralysis for several hours/days, researching alternatives etc.

I am much better at adding new features to existing code. The constraints are much better defined. I also always strive for perfect backwards compatibility if possible, which is both great for the users (since they have to do nothing, upgrading just works) and also great for me, since it's another set of interesting and challenging constraints to work against.

I got slightly better in getting out of analysis paralysis by doing Advent of Code in real time. This forced me to start writing code, fast. I think the effect has worn off by now though.

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