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The real skill is known which ideas to shoot down or heavily rework, which is probably the most valuable thing a senior engineer brings to the table.
You shouldn't listen to every nay-sayer. Sometimes criticism is not convincing and it can be a skill separating out useful criticism from unconvincing criticism. However if someone did X in the past and ran into problem Y, you should probably have an answer to why Y is not a problem for your use case or what you plan to do differently to avoid Y.
If your good idea is so lame it can't even take the tiniest bit of criticism, its probably not a good idea.
Like in the article, the criticism seems pretty valid but they aren't really about the idea. If the criticism is that DevOps doesn't want to do it [do you just mean ops? Isnt this the opposite of the concept of devops?], that is not a criticism of your idea, that is a criticism of you failing to get stakeholders on board who you plan to rely on. If the criticism is "i haven't heard customers request this" that is code for you failed to make a compelling business case for your idea. Those are criticisms of you not your idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This logic means No, it doesn't. Maybe wind back on the absolutism a little and look to the wide world where things happen. Warts and all.
I am arguing it does. Condescending, dismissive responses aren’t arguments. I am not being absolutist, I am saying you are making it impossible to disagree by definition. I am down to discuss this if you want to but this isn’t exactly a great start to a productive conversation.
My thought entirely. Perhaps you think I'm in the camp that believes all good ides come to fruition.
My position is that the world is complex, there are "good ideas" that have a time frame, should they not be implemented with that time frame their time has passed and they're no longer good ideas.
That said, my response above stands - just because a good idea exists and is timely, it does not follow that failures to implement cannot happen, nor does it mean that at least one attempt must succeed, further there are cases with a time window, I have a great idea for improving horse drawn ploughing, for example ...
Also, see @II2II 's peer comment above, another take on possible happenings.
Where I take issue with the content of your comment is specifically:
> This logic means ...
the reasoning you use there eludes me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many good ideas have multiple failed attempts wrt implementation. Eg: if we accept that transcontinental rail spanning the USofA was a good idea, then it can be seen that several wanna be railroad barons fell by the wayside.
This logic means you can’t ever be wrong because any case of a good idea not being implemented can be hand waved away as “not yet.” Edit: you changed your comment a lot
A lot of ideas fail because they're not ready: they are expensive, they are not reliable (yet), the world is not ready for them. None of those reasons mean an idea is bad. They simply mean it will take more time and effort for them to work.
With all due respect, if the idea is good, then it will happen. The proposer of the idea needs to nurture it and part of that is defending it. When someone is super optimistic and comes forward with an idea where: - it's actually just a half baked solution for something I already tried to solve 4 years ago - I'm acutely aware of all the spots it will fall - they still think it can work, when it really really honestly…
This is good for day to day ideas and innivation. Moonshots probably need something else which I am not sure what to propose. Other than POC with some numbers to get more explore time.
> "I haven't heard any customers request this." "We can't use Python for that, it's too slow." "That introduces too much complexity." "We tried something like that before and it didn't work." "DevOps won't want to support another service." "People are used to the way it works now." > None of these people are wrong or stupid. And none of them have added any value. Bzzt. Since all of these people are correct and smart,…
Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk. Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.
I owe it to my colleagues to not make them the bad guys by shooting down an idea.
> "I haven't heard any customers request this." "We can't use Python for that, it's too slow." "That introduces too much complexity." "We tried something like that before and it didn't work." "DevOps won't want to support another service." "People are used to the way it works now." > None of these people are wrong or stupid. And none of them have added any value. Bzzt. Since all of these people are correct and smart,…
Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk. Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.
Then go back, address the objections, and re-propose.
If you can't explain at least a little bit of "why this is worth at least digging into", that's on you.
> "I haven't heard any customers request this." "We can't use Python for that, it's too slow." "That introduces too much complexity." "We tried something like that before and it didn't work." "DevOps won't want to support another service." "People are used to the way it works now." > None of these people are wrong or stupid. And none of them have added any value. Bzzt. Since all of these people are correct and smart,…
Python is slow though, and for many use cases it won't work.
For example, say somebody wanted to build a performant systems type software like version control. You're not really going to do that in Python. Something like that would even be slow in much "faster" Node.js.
Some stuff you can't really use dynamic langauges for, if you want it to be performant. Low-level stuff usually, of course.
To your point, you could showcase how Python might call out to other languages like Rust, and show why it's convenient to keep some stuff in Python.