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

It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

fernandovillalba.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 195 posts

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#11

Post by aikiplayer »

amw-zero wrote: post #7

We can’t measure cognitive load though. Or if we can, no one knows a way to apply that to software projects.

We might not be able to quantitatively measure it but we can run studies to evaluate what individuals and teams can handle. Human factors people do this and it’s a sub field in industrial engineering. The military runs these studies and I’d imagine air traffic controllers do them as well, etc. You sometimes get really surprising results.

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#12

Post by bobobob420 »

simlevesque wrote: post #4
bobobob420 wrote: post #2

How do you get to third on hn with 8 points and 0 comments in 2 hours?

By being the new post with the most points and comments in 2 hours. If another post would was more recent and had more points it would be higher. These posts get a temporary boost but if the points stay the same while being at the top, it'll disappear pretty soon.

Seems pretty easy to bot. Its also a personal blog which adds to suspicion. There is also a new trend which is trying to get on hackernews front page

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#13

Post by MichaelZuo »

mhh__ wrote: post #9
amw-zero wrote: post #7

We can’t measure cognitive load though. Or if we can, no one knows a way to apply that to software projects.

You can't and shouldn't try to. We can however qualitatively try to see where the wind is blowing.

How does someone verify their understanding is correct then?

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#14

Post by hmeh »

It’s hard to imagine worse advice. Software design principles lead you to good architecture. Focus on autonomy, proper partitioning, and sound design and you get what you get. If you target monoliths out of some misguided attempt to reduce cognitive load, you will only create unnecessary entanglement. If you try to target “microservices” with N services per team or other arbitrary target, you will end up missing boundaries you should realize or introducing ones you shouldn’t.

There is no instant pudding.

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#15

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

I used to complain about overly complex software, until I realized the problems themselves were very complex. There was/is no way around complexity, and pushing for early simplicity causes more problems than it solves. People need to accept that encoding 1,000 if else statements (software engineering) will be complex no matter how you spin it. Just design the software upfront for what you will need, like a professional. Technical debt more commonly comes from under abstraction rather than too much complexity/abstraction.

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#17

Post by hmeh »

hmeh wrote: post #14

It’s hard to imagine worse advice. Software design principles lead you to good architecture. Focus on autonomy, proper partitioning, and sound design and you get what you get. If you target monoliths out of some misguided attempt to reduce cognitive load, you will only create unnecessary entanglement. If you try to target “microservices” with N services per team or other arbitrary target, you will end up missing boun…

Just read the author’s bio. This is a person that appears to have zero software design experience writing an article telling you to ignore software design and just respect your team configuration. I call this Conway’s Confusion.

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#18

Post by imachine1980_ »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #15

I used to complain about overly complex software, until I realized the problems themselves were very complex. There was/is no way around complexity, and pushing for early simplicity causes more problems than it solves. People need to accept that encoding 1,000 if else statements (software engineering) will be complex no matter how you spin it. Just design the software upfront for what you will need, like a profession…

i work in legacy code over abstraction gives more headaches than having to check manually when you need to change the software and the person who write it isn't in the company in the last five years, because the software is full of constrains that you don't known, and when you need to change something basic the whole software collapse(because of the interdependence of the componentes).

Re: It's not microservice or monolith; it's cognitive load

#20

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

imachine1980_ wrote: post #18
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #15

I used to complain about overly complex software, until I realized the problems themselves were very complex. There was/is no way around complexity, and pushing for early simplicity causes more problems than it solves. People need to accept that encoding 1,000 if else statements (software engineering) will be complex no matter how you spin it. Just design the software upfront for what you will need, like a profession…

i work in legacy code over abstraction gives more headaches than having to check manually when you need to change the software and the person who write it isn't in the company in the last five years, because the software is full of constrains that you don't known, and when you need to change something basic the whole software collapse(because of the interdependence of the componentes).

Right but thats just bad programming. If they had used no abstraction it would also be a nightmare.
Post reply on HN