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We have used too many levels of abstractions

unixsheikh.com

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Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#271

Post by user3939382 »

fatnoah wrote: post #201
josephg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have never seen a dump of an HTTP message, headers and verbs are abstract things to them. When I was teaching programming, I had a fun party trick whenever we got to HTTP. I'd fire up netcat (in listen mode), then connect from a web browser and "serve" a website by hand. I'd show the students the HTTP request that came in, and just manually type out a simple HTTP response and they'd see it appear live in the b…

Not quite the same, but I remember sending emails via telnet. I showed that to a younger dev who was somewhat blown away by the fact it wasn't via some REST API.

HELO

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#272

Post by notacoward »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12

I think there is one interesting angle to this problem. I am someone who grew up with the technology, as the levels of abstractions were being added. I am now benefiting from all those accumulated decades of knowledge. As the IT / development world was changing, I had enormous privilege and comfort to learn the things at the pace they were happening. Being able to assimilate changes over long decades. Be a witness to…

I believe that the first lesson plan for any subject should be to follow its historical progression. That's not the be-all and end-all but, whether you're talking about computer science or physics or economics, it's a good starting point because it's one proven way to deal with the field's complexity. You just have to be clear that the simpler models from older times are pedagogical tools, not current understanding.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#273

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

It's not so bad once you just face it head on: we have toolchain cancer. Yeah, cancer sucks, but are we really so happy with our current set of companies that having them die of cancer is such a bad thing? They're not people. It's ok to want them dead so we can do things differently in the future.

Not all technology feeds into the cycle of tool bloat, we just need to get better at choosing our tools wisely instead of letting somebody's marketing department influence our decisions.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#274

Post by AnimalMuppet »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12

I think there is one interesting angle to this problem. I am someone who grew up with the technology, as the levels of abstractions were being added. I am now benefiting from all those accumulated decades of knowledge. As the IT / development world was changing, I had enormous privilege and comfort to learn the things at the pace they were happening. Being able to assimilate changes over long decades. Be a witness to…

I think this is unduly pessimistic. Take low-level kernel work, for instance. Between Linux, Microsoft, and Apple, there are lots of people who understand it. It's just a smaller proportion than used to understand it. The absolute number of people has probably grown.

But we don't need every programmer to understand low-level kernel stuff, precisely because the kernel abstraction is good enough at hiding that stuff. Most of us don't need to care (whereas 40 years ago, many more did need to care).

Personally, I myself never want to care about low-level kernel things. When I'm trying to write a program to do something, if I can write it without having to worry about low-level things, that's a win.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#275

Post by klysm »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #236

As a 15+ years webdev my recent projects in the front-end are almost pure "vanilla JS" (Just JS) + Html, and CSS with only Petite Vue / Alpine on top. I find the modern Vue, React etc. stacks absolutely insufferably complex and prone to breaking in 1000 places each time you upgrade some package, or change som random thing in the already stupidly complex "Tooling/Build" chains people are setting up by default. And it'…

Although I agree that many sites could get away without the bloat of client side JavaScript frameworks, sometimes the complexity is truly justified and it enables you to deliver a better product. Complex dashboards with data intensive interactions and explorations are so much easier with React or something similar

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#276

Post by dclowd9901 »

hliyan wrote: post #65
mrkeen wrote: post #22

I think a good first step towards improvement in this space is by separating the terms 'abstraction' and 'indirection'. Programmers too often add indirections which don't provide abstraction: * The programmer wants to POST an object to a web server. * The programmer also wants to think about it at the level of POSTing an object to a web server. * And yet the programmer creates an HttpClient.java and an AbstractClient…

Yes. Anything that is destroyed during the process of compilation is not architecture. It is just a method of code organisation, and we've turned the subject into a holy war, pulling in mindshare that should be spent on more important problems (e.g. we have fibre lines and Ghz multi-core processors, but why are user interactions slower than they were in 1995?). 80% of code organisation problems require doing a couple…

> we have fibre lines

We do? In my neighborhood, we can’t get fiber lines because of some combination of NIMBYism and political back-scratching allowing a cable company to continue to serve us shit slow and unreliable internet. In the middle of a city!

I’m more interested in solving _those_ problems than how long a request round trip takes.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#277

Post by thfuran »

internet101010 wrote: post #246
EvanAnderson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be an increasingly important history component in comp sci., software engineering, infosec, and associated fields. I think this is a place where the IT field has done a bad job and, as a result, we've had unbelievable amounts of "wheel reinvention". I'd love to hear from somebody with experience in scientific or other disciplines and IT who could contrast their fields with ours. I only know that I have had…

>as a result, we've had unbelievable amounts of "wheel reinvention". During the crypto boom I distinctly remember hearing someone say something about creating a decentralized Discord. I was like... that's IRC.

I guess, if you also remove almost all of the features of discord.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#278

Post by Towaway69 »

Abstractions are also related to complexity. As the interdependence between various systems increases, so does abstractions.

Then those external dependencies and services are updated independently and the corresponding abstractions need updating.

Then external services are replaced and new abstractions are introduced.

Most technologies are never "finished" and instead they are updated cause a domino effect of downstream updates.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#279

Post by 0x445442 »

But was the author’s work groomed? Was time scheduled for it in the backlog? What feature specifically was his Columboesque investigation supporting?

This is what happens when you turn Engineers into Devs. Software Engineering used to be viewed more as a profession but orgs have been chasing the holy grail of commoditizing software development. It’s not assembly line work and never will be.

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