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What the hell have you built

wthhyb.sacha.house

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Re: What the hell have you built

#191

Post by 9dev »

spoiler wrote: post #149
9dev wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it adds friction, and whoever introduces that CI pipeline will be the one getting messages from annoyed developers, saying "your pipeline isn't working again". It's definitely a source of complexity on its own, so something you want to consider first.

U agree it adds a bit of complexity, but all code adds complexity. Maybe interacted with CIs too much and it's Stockholm syndrome, but they are there to help tame and offload complexity, not just complexity for complexity'a sake

> they are there to help tame and offload complexity, not just complexity for complexity'a sake

Theoretically. Practically, you're hunting for the reason why your GitHub token doesn't allow you to install a private package from another repository in your org during the build, then you learn you need a classic personal access token tied to an individual user account to interact with GitHub's own package registry, you decide that that sounds brittle and after some pondering, you figure that you can just create a GitHub app that you install in your org and write a small action that uses the GitHub API to create an on-demand token with the correct scopes, and you just need to bundle that so you can use it in your pipeline, but that requires a node_modules folder in your repository, and…

Oh! Could it be that you just added complexity for complexity's sake?

Re: What the hell have you built

#193

Post by BillinghamJ »

macspoofing wrote: post #162
9dev wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't. When your server crashes, your availability is zero. It might crash because of a myriad of reasons; at some times, you might need to update the kernel to patch a security issue for example, and are forced to take your app down yourself. If your business can afford irregular downtime, by all means, go for it. Otherwise, you'll need to take precautions, and that will invariably make the system more complex t…

>You don't. When your server crashes, your availability is zero. As your business needs grow, you can start layering complexity on top. The point is you don't start at 11 with a overly complex architecture. In your example, if your server crashes, just make sure you have some sort of automatic restart. In practice that may mean a downtime of seconds for your 12 users. Is that more complexity? Sure - but not much. If…

Changing/layering architecture adds risk. If you've got a standard way of working you can easily throw in on day one whose fundamentals then don't need to be changed for years, that's way lower risk, easier, faster

It is common for founding engineers to start with a preexisting way of working that they import from their previous more-scaled company, and that approach is refined and compounded over time

It does mean starting with more than is necessary at the start, but that doesn't mean it has to be particularly complex. It means you start with heaps of already-solved problems that you simply never have to deal with, allowing focus on the product goals and deep technical investments that need to be specific to the new company

Re: What the hell have you built

#194

Post by 1313ed01 »

buzzardbait wrote: post #95

The alternative to CI/CD pipelines is to rely on human beings to perform the same repetitive actions the exact same way every single time without any mistakes. You would never convince me to accept that for any non-trivial project. Especially in an age where you can basically click a menu in GitHub and say "Hey, can I have a CI pipeline please?"

No, the alternative is/was something like "make test" or "build_deploy_and_test.sh".

Re: What the hell have you built

#195

Post by [deleted] »

fouc wrote: post #86

Funny, from the title I was expecting a productivity-adjacent "What have you even built?" article. Except it's really a "What over-engineered monstrosity have you built?" in the theme of "choose boring technology" p.s. MariaDB (MySQL fork) is technically older and more boring than PostgreSQL so they're both equally valid choices. Best choice is ultimately whatever you're most familiar with.

[deleted]

Re: What the hell have you built

#196

Post by pjc50 »

9dev wrote: post #143
BlindEyeHalo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not do a CI pipeline from the beginning instead of relying on trust that no one ever forgets to run a check, considering adding CI is trivial with gitlab or github.

Because it adds friction, and whoever introduces that CI pipeline will be the one getting messages from annoyed developers, saying "your pipeline isn't working again". It's definitely a source of complexity on its own, so something you want to consider first.

I'm aware of how much overhead CI pipelines can be, especially for multiple platforms and architectures, but at the same time developing for N>1 developers without some sort of CI feels like developing without version control: it's like coming to work without your trousers on.

Re: What the hell have you built

#197

Post by jagraff »

deified wrote: post #178

There is an argument I rarely ever see in discussions like this, which is about reducing the need for working memory in humans. I'm just in the mid thirties, but my ability to keep things in working memory is vastly reduced compared to my twenties. Might just be me who's not cut out for programming or system architecturing, but in my experience what is hard for me is often what is hard for others, they just either do…

This is a good point - having your code broken up into standalone units that can fit into working memory has real benefits to the coder. I think especially with the rise of coding agents (which, like it or not, are here to stay and are likely going to increase in use over time), sections of code that can fit in a context window cleanly will be much more amenable to manipulation by LLMs and require less human oversight to modify, which may be super useful for companies that want to move faster than the speed of human programming will allow.

Re: What the hell have you built

#198

Post by pjc50 »

torben-friis wrote: post #164
benterix wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With time, I discovered something interesting: for us, techies, using container orchestration is about reliability, zero-downtime deployments, limiting blast radius etc. But for management, it's completely different. It's all about managing complexity on an organizational level. It's so much easier to think in terms "Team 1 is in charge of microservice A". And I know from experience that it works decently enough, at…

It’s not a management thing. I’m an engineer and I think it’s THE main advantage micro services actually provide: they split your code hard and allow a team to actually get ownership of the domain. No crossing domain boundaries, no in between shared code, etc. I know: it’s ridiculous to have an architectural barrier for an organizational reason, and the cost of a bad slice multiplies. I still think in some situations…

That was the original Amazon motivation, and it makes sense. Conway's law. A hundred developers on a single codebase needs significant discipline.

But that doesn't warrant its use in smaller organizations, or for smaller deployments.

Re: What the hell have you built

#199

Post by sevensor »

torben-friis wrote: post #183
strken wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it's ridiculous to have an architectural barrier for org reasons. Requiring every component to be behind a network call seems like overkill in nearly all cases, but encapsulating complexity into a library where domain experts can maintain it is how most software gets built. You've got to lock those demons away where they can't affect the rest of the users.

>Requiring every component to be behind a network call seems like overkill in nearly all cases That’s what I was referring to, sorry for the inaccurate adjective. Most people try to split a monolith in domains, move code as libraries, or stuff like that - but IMO you rarely avoid a shared space importing the subdomains, with blurry/leaky boundaries, and with ownership falling between the cracks. Micro services predis…

How about old fashioned interprocess communication? You can have separate codebases, written in different languages, with different responsibilities, running on the same computer. Way fewer moving parts than RPC over a network.

Re: What the hell have you built

#200

Post by tnel77 »

chistev wrote: post #142
tnel77 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this job market, how am I supposed to get hired without the latest buzzwords on my resume? I can’t just have monolithic server and Postgres! (Sarcasm)

Indicating sarcasm ruins the sarcasm

Sadly, it is missed on a lot of people. Without the disclaimer, I would then have a bunch of serious replies “educating” me about my life choices.
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