I'll push back against this, despite it being so popular. I dislike the arbitrary "innovation tokens" and I think this entire concept really blurs the lines and feels sort of unserious. Engineers should understand requirements, risks, tradeoffs, and potential gains. New technology may be right for that. Novel approaches may be right for that. "Novel" or "New" are only proxies and they're weak. For example, I may thin…
At this point, any new programming language or framework adds nothing. Name one paradigm shifting programming language or framework over the last 10 years that has made anything previously not possible possible or even significantly easier.
Choose Boring Technology (2015)
221–230 of 269 posts
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#222This is one of my favourite blogposts and then presentations https://boringtechnology.club/ ... Back when it first came out, everyone was rushing to build microservices and shun practiced technologies, systems and software architectures, in search of some shortcut to software and systems utopia. It was fairly obvious it wasn't going to deliver, but usually newer and more inexperienced engineers were extremely enthusi…
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#223Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#224Some of this may have been a reaction to the era of Javascript framework churn. There were way too many different technologies for doing roughly the same job. They all more or less worked. On the other hand, IBM was late getting into integrated circuits. They had Solid Logic Technology, automated machinery for putting transistors into ceramic substrates to make tiny but discrete circuits. That's what powered the IBM…
The example I used is incredibly clear-cut, and is the subject of ridicule, but when the boundaries blurrier, people have managed to get away with this sleight of hand.
The point I want to make: the technologist who designs next-gen semiconductor processes or planes that fly faster and further, is categorically, qualitatively different from the one who writes code for ecommerce websites.
No points for guessing which group has lobbied successfully for erasing this distinction.
This is a civilizational issue. Despite allegedly a group of technocrats being charge of society, who do everything in the name of progress, there has been very little progress outside the field of AI during the past decade.
And this was true even a decade ago - this article argues against progress in software engineering - saying all new stuff is useless, and for the record they turned out to be mostly right, all new stuff did turn out to be meh. Curiously, it names node as one of the hot new things of his era - though it's exactly the opposite, node succeeded, because it managed to transplant the validated engineering and mindshare of js devs to the backend and other domains, so even when new, it chose the niche of 'boring' tech.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#225But .... if you run a multi cloud hybrid setup with kubernetes, service mesh, data [lake|pond|ocean] and millions of other fancy words in tech at each and every layer, you resume would look so awesome and you sound wicked smart. And the VP gets 600M budget for AWS and 600 developers, SREs, DevOps, PMO. It is not that things won't run, humans have perverse incentives.
I'm certain a lot of porn/adult industry run their setup like I mentioned with a Romanian dude running the entire infrastructure for $15K - $20K.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#226This is one of my favourite blogposts and then presentations https://boringtechnology.club/ ... Back when it first came out, everyone was rushing to build microservices and shun practiced technologies, systems and software architectures, in search of some shortcut to software and systems utopia. It was fairly obvious it wasn't going to deliver, but usually newer and more inexperienced engineers were extremely enthusi…
I think this blogpost changed the industry. Maybe it gave us all permission to go with what we know. A million devs sighed in relief. lol
do you remember pythons miserable asyncio era (or how long it took to remove gil)? hell theres even something to the joke that "docker was created because python's pip is atrocious".
i dont think it changed the industry for better. it created a thought terminating slogan that was used to justify choices that were bad for developer ergonomics and curtail people trying for sonething better
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#2272 bare-metals with Linux, Postgres, HAProxy and PHP (or Python/Django) work perfectly fine for 99% of apps that businesses need. This will run with 99.99% uptime, 4-hour warranty from Dell/HPE (failover to the other server). Is also somewhat vertically scalable (upgrade RAM/SSD). Kids who finish high school can be taught to own and run this. But .... if you run a multi cloud hybrid setup with kubernetes, service mesh…
I think that a lot of devs just think they _have_ to do it that way, or they over-optimize too early and build the ultimate system before they even know if anyone will use the app or site.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was written over a decade ago. I'd take it in that context. Lots of the tech they're talking about was being cargo culted en-masse. So yes, pick boring tech, defined as the tech you know the sharp edges of.
I don't think that context is relevant to my comment. I didn't say "in hindsight, those technologies are great!", I pointed out that "boring" is meaningless, and any meaning you attribute to it like "defined as the tech you know the sharp edges of" is better substituted in. That is, if someone said two sentences, I would only care about the second one: 1. "We should use this because it is boring" 2. "We should use th…
why are you even doing in tech? your users should just use boring technology, pen and paper is great and boring, no need for a computer, much less a saas.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#229Some of this may have been a reaction to the era of Javascript framework churn. There were way too many different technologies for doing roughly the same job. They all more or less worked. On the other hand, IBM was late getting into integrated circuits. They had Solid Logic Technology, automated machinery for putting transistors into ceramic substrates to make tiny but discrete circuits. That's what powered the IBM…
I think there's the problem of pretending to be something that one is not - when people have always tried to associate themselves and the things they did with the cool 'in-group' of genuinely inspiring people, to the point where the fakery was in your face - think of companies meaninglessly cramming 'AI' or 'crypto' into their products. The example I used is incredibly clear-cut, and is the subject of ridicule, but w…
Rechargable batteries are much better. mRNA vaccines work. The Rust programming language works. Stacked ICs are working. Even mid-sized cities in Asia now have subways. Self-driving taxis are on the roads. There are multiple fusion power startups, and one or more might succeed. Satellite internet is available and cheap. Heat pumps have improved. Drones are really successful. Electric motor control technology has improved considerably. Humanoid robots are in pilot production.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see innovation as a guardrail against CV driven development. More, I think you need to consider the context of when this was written. It was a period of rapid innovation/evolution - I remember more than a handful of projects failing (either undelivered or rewritten well under their expected lifecycle) around this time because teams had taken bets on new tech either they didn't know how to use well or the tech didn'…
Not a fan of the phrase "CV driven development". It's a great example of a fundamental attribution error. In my experience, people choose the wrong tech for a handful of reasons, last of which is to further their career. Using that phrase also implies that the author's intentions are pure but others aren't. As if you have insight into what motivates them.