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What the hell have you built

wthhyb.sacha.house

51–60 of 239 posts

Re: What the hell have you built

#51
I love the fact that the author "wrote" this page with massive CSS framework (tailwind) and some sort of Javascript framework, with a bundler and obfuscator - instead of a plain, simple HTML page. Well played! :-)

Re: What the hell have you built

#53

"Maybe Redis for caching". Really that's going way too far - you do NOT need Redis for caching. Just put it in Postgres. Why go to this much trouble to put people in their place for over engineering then concede "maybe Redis for caching" when this is absolutely something you can do in Postgres. The author clearly cannot stop their own inner desire for overengineering.

Postgres has support for an eventually consistent in-memory caching layer?

[deleted]

Re: What the hell have you built

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do programmers really find so much fun in creating accidental complexity?" I certainly did for a number of years - I just had the luck that the cool things I happened to pick on in the early/mid 1990s turned out to be quite important (Web '92, Java '94). Now my views have flipped almost completely the other way - technology as a means of delivering value. Edit: Other cool technology that I loved like Common Lisp & C…

I see what you mean, sometimes "accidental complexity" can also be a form of getting to know a technology really well and that can be useful and still fun. Kudos for that :)

Oh yes I loved building stuff with all these technologies mostly for my own entertainment - fortunately I was in academia so could indulge myself. ;-)

Re: What the hell have you built

#56

"Maybe Redis for caching". Really that's going way too far - you do NOT need Redis for caching. Just put it in Postgres. Why go to this much trouble to put people in their place for over engineering then concede "maybe Redis for caching" when this is absolutely something you can do in Postgres. The author clearly cannot stop their own inner desire for overengineering.

Redis is the filler you shove in there when Postgres itself starts slowing down. Writing database queries that work and writing database queries that work efficiently are very different things.

It'll give you time to redesign and rebuild so Postgres is fast enough again. Then you can take Redis out, but once you've set it up you may as well keep it running just in case.

Re: What the hell have you built

#58
Ironic that the clicking those big buttons only causes a JS error to be logged to console with nothing else happening. That doesn't particularly lend to the authors credibility, although the advice of using simple architecture where possible is correct.

Re: What the hell have you built

#59
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really for "fun"? Or is it to satisfy the ideals of some CTO/VPE disconnected from the real world that wants architecture to be done a certain way? I still remember doing systems design interviews a few years ago when microservices were in vogue, and my routine was probing if they were ok with a simpler monolith or if they wanted to go crazy on cloud-native, serverless and microservices shizzle. It did backfire…

I dont quite follow. I understand mono vs micro services, and in the last 3 weeks I had to study for system design and do the interviews to get offers. Its a tradeoff, and the system design interview is meant to see if one understands how systems can scale to hypothetical (maybe unrealistic) high loads. In this context the only reason for a microservice is independent scaling and with that also fault tolerance if an…

Can you elaborate on the fault tolerance advantage of micro services?

For context, my current project is a monolith web app with services being part of the monolith and called with try/catch. I can understand perhaps faster, independent, less risky recovery in the micro services case but don’t quite understand the fault tolerance gain.

Re: What the hell have you built

#60
post #7

I feel like sometimes it’s a form of procrastination. There are things we don’t want to do (talk to costumers, investors, legal, etc.), so instead we do the fun things (fun for engineers). It’s a convenient arrangement because we can easily convince ourselves and others that we’re actually being productive (we’re not, we’re just spinning wheels).

It's the natural evolution to becoming a fun addict. Unless you actively push yourself to do the uncomfortable work every day, you will always slowly deteriorate and you will run into huge issues in the future that could've been avoided. And that doesn't just apply to software.

I like your idea of doing some amount of uncomfortable work every day, internalizing it until it becomes second nature. Any tips on how to start? (other than just do it) :)
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