Imaginary problems are the root of bad software • Hacker News Board

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#221

Post by someweirdperson » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

ilyt wrote: post #128

lewisjoe wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a person who started using computers from the early 2000s era: THANK YOU! None of the current SaaS apps I use can come close to the experience of using softwares from that era. Take a simple list view of a typical Windows/Mac software? 1. Command clicking selected multiple objects 2. Shift clicking selected a range. 3. Right clicking brought up selection actions. 4. Double clicking opened an object. This pattern…

And everything had a keybind so if you worked in software every day you could be as fast as cli nerds.

And not even be slowed down by animations.

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#222

Post by dagmx » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #68

davidmnoll wrote: post #27

I agree with this to some extent. but there’s a flip side too. This mentality is often taken way too far. I had an old boss who wouldn’t allow me to write unit tests citing this thought process. Even at places with decent engineering practices, I’ve seen so many examples of software where you’re limited to a one to many relationship for something that could and easily should have been implemented as many to many, ren…

Ive seen a lot of engineers complain about YAGNI being taken too far but none who have seen their concerns validated by reality.

I’ve had tons of times where YAGNI has bitten teams at a FAANG. It’s been responsible for re-orgs as products have to pivot to meet the goals that were dismissed but turned out to be needed.

I was creating a very important demo once, features i had said were important were classified as YAGNI. Leadership eventually saw that we couldn’t deliver without said features. YAGNI bit those teams in the butt.

these things happen all the time internally to companies but get ironed out internally as well.

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#223

Post by nine_zeros » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

voz_ wrote: post #97

lewisjoe wrote: post #73

If anything it's the incentive system in software industry, which is at fault. 1. No designer is given promotion for sticking to conventional designs. It's their creative & clever designs that get them attention and career incentives. 2. No engineer is paid extra for keeping the codebase without growing too much. It's re-writes and the effort he puts in to churn out more solutions (than there are problems) that offer…

Uber was a massive example of this. The best engineers kept their head down and just tried to keep things afloat, fixing bugs, etc. However, a large and insidious cadre of B tier engineers was constantly writing docs proposing meaningless arbitrary system changes and new designs for the sake the changes themselves. These new projects were the only way to get promoted. The entire e4->5->6->7 track was written in such…

The career ladder is among the biggest fuck ups of the tech industry. They incentivize bullshittery more than actual innovation. There are more rewards for BS RFCs than in keeping the ship running.

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#224

Post by ilyt » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:04 PM UTC

rafark wrote: post #145

ilyt wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they succeed because of PHP or was it just a tech used at the time and anything else similar at the time would be fine either way?

They succeeded because of php. It was easy to use for them. So it enabled them to materialize their ideas. It was the right tool for them. Anything else would have been fine either way, if it was the language they were the most comfortable with. In their case, it happened to be php.

That just sounds like "they succeeded because they knew a programming language", not that it was right one compared to competition

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#225

Post by l0b0 » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

stevehind wrote: post #20

This resonates and one way to describe it is an incentive problem. Someone whose incentives are tightly aligned with the business is going to solve the actual problem and simply and effectively as possible. Someone who is incentivized to build career capital and experience other than via impact (e.g. so they can get uplevelled, pass an external interview loop, etc) is much more likely to focus on unimportant hard pro…

> Someone whose incentives are tightly aligned with the business is going to solve the actual problem and simply and effectively as possible.

On average, and depending on skill. Incentives are hugely important (probably the most important metric any manager could work on), but even they do not guarantee results. If you hire so many juniors that nobody is there to upskill them fast, you only get one lottery ticket per employee. Conversely, if you hire a bunch of geniuses and fail to give them incentives to work on realisable, useful problems together, you get two lottery tickets per employee at twice the price.

(This comment feels woefully incomplete. Does anyone know of good resources to learn more about incentive structures and how they relate to individual and company success? I feel like the problem is that incentive structures change massively when companies grow, so even for unicorns there's just a short sweet spot where we can actually learn how they are supposed to look.)

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#226

Post by danielovichdk » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

I dont want to get paid and have fun.

I want to get paid to solve real fucking problems which has a factual validated need from real people.

Most people are terrible professionals. Writes code to have fun and expects to be paid too. And even blogs about it too.

I want to be in the trenches. Hard work. Real work. Not some glamorous bullshit that lasts nowhere. Quality long lived treasure is what I strive for.

And I dont want to progress by applying popculture technologies because some punks subjective opinion wants to have fun. One has to be a prick and tell these people off because they shovel shit and pad their own backs when the re-shovels it with a new fad.

I want to progress by making slow surgery like precision work. I want to make sure that what I do sticks and is sound quality, no code is written for fun. Code is a fucking liability.

Between the scams and the hustle, the number runners and the pick pockets, real people with real quality minds do real good work. Those are the only programmers worth being around and hire. Everything else is just a waste of time and mental capacity.

So many morons in this business. It's really too much.

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#227

Post by daguar » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

This is why I truly love support-driven development.

While it’s possible to prioritize problems that don’t affect most people (squeaky wheels) it’s a hell of a lot more effective than most of the methods I know to have a very low barrier to contacting you for users, and fixing the things that come up.

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#228

Post by jiggawatts » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

djbusby wrote: post #56

stevehind wrote: post #20

This resonates and one way to describe it is an incentive problem. Someone whose incentives are tightly aligned with the business is going to solve the actual problem and simply and effectively as possible. Someone who is incentivized to build career capital and experience other than via impact (e.g. so they can get uplevelled, pass an external interview loop, etc) is much more likely to focus on unimportant hard pro…

RDD: Resume Driven Development

In a large government IT department:

“I think we should use a Kubernetes cluster!”

“You’re joking, surely? This is a tiny web site with mostly static content!”

Next project:

“For this web app, I propose we use Kubernetes…”

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#229

Post by kylelahnakoski » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:24 PM UTC

sirsinsalot wrote: post #100

lewisjoe wrote: post #73

If anything it's the incentive system in software industry, which is at fault. 1. No designer is given promotion for sticking to conventional designs. It's their creative & clever designs that get them attention and career incentives. 2. No engineer is paid extra for keeping the codebase without growing too much. It's re-writes and the effort he puts in to churn out more solutions (than there are problems) that offer…

> No engineer is paid extra for keeping the codebase without growing too much. I am. I'm paid more than most developers to run a team doing just this. We make minimal change, have an absolutely non-negotiable focus on stability and minimalism and reject any change that isn't absolutely driven by validated majority user need. Even then, the bar is high. I'm not saying this is a common situation, but it certainly isn't…

Minimal change, or minimal code? Refactoring code can make code smaller but depends on good testing. Applying minimal changes results in redundant and complicated code, but less likely to break existing functionality.

Re: Imaginary problems are the root of bad software

#230

Post by wheybags » Sun, Jun 18, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

ilyt wrote: post #127

pavlov wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “No designer is given promotion for sticking to conventional designs. It's their creative & clever designs that get them attention and career incentives.” This is a massive change from my first software industry job in 1997. I was essentially a “design intern who knows HTML” on a team that built a shrinkwrap Windows application for enterprises. The core of the design team was a graphic designer, a cognitive scienti…

Remember times where you could change the theme and all of the apps followed suit ? Even in Linux there were tools to sync gnome with QT look so you could have one theme applied to every app for nice and consistent look, all the way to how the common icons look. Nowadays ? Every fucking app gotta have their own different styling. Will the setting icon be three dots, gear, or honey badger ? WHO FUCKING KNOWS. You'd be…

I remember that theory. I also remember the reality that if you changed your background colour to anything but white, some app, somewhere, was going to become an unreadable black text on black background mess.