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Choose Boring Technology (2015)

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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#261

Post by hitekker »

jonahx wrote: post #110
insanitybit wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CV driven development is just as well guarded against by asking someone to justify their technical decisions based on the requirements and how the solution meets them. So "boring" does nothing to further that. > More, I think you need to consider the context of when this was written. It was a period of rapid innovation/evolution It's linked today, people feel it's relevant today. This isn't a historic piece about how…

> CV driven development is just as well guarded against by asking someone to justify their technical decisions based on the requirements and how the solution meets them. So "boring" does nothing to further that. It doesn't though. It's very easy to manufacture reasons why "shiny new thing" is the objectively right fit for something, even when it's not. The word "boring" is well-chosen because it's addressing a bias m…

On a meta level, this thread shows how rejecting boring leads to bickering.

Our natural default as engineers is to choose exciting tech that invites debate. At scale, across many choices, those debates become drama. For some people, that drama is fun. For most people, that drama is the worst kind of boring. Most people would want to limit that drama by setting a sensible, sane default.

As I see it, the objection to boring-as-default reflects a tolerance for drama that uses "technical" arguments to override business priority. It's a signal that we engineers can't manage our own impulses, let alone our complexity budget, so management has to step in to baby us.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#262

Post by insanitybit »

hitekker wrote: post #261
jonahx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CV driven development is just as well guarded against by asking someone to justify their technical decisions based on the requirements and how the solution meets them. So "boring" does nothing to further that. It doesn't though. It's very easy to manufacture reasons why "shiny new thing" is the objectively right fit for something, even when it's not. The word "boring" is well-chosen because it's addressing a bias m…

On a meta level, this thread shows how rejecting boring leads to bickering. Our natural default as engineers is to choose exciting tech that invites debate. At scale, across many choices, those debates become drama. For some people, that drama is fun. For most people, that drama is the worst kind of boring. Most people would want to limit that drama by setting a sensible, sane default. As I see it, the objection to b…

The obvious parody argument is that by introducing "boring" as a term there's now confusion preventing discussion based on real technical merits.

> so management has to step in to baby us.

An engineer wrote that post lol

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#263

Post by 59nadir »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #192
59nadir wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d say “push all your innovation tokens into agents” is probably a good move Or better yet, just don't use agents, deliver something better with all the stability and boringness that you have. There's never been a better time than now to produce software that actually seems to work and march along steadily; your competitors are all flailing wildly like morons.

That's where the human factor comes in though: boring tech makes for boring work makes for bored people, and bored people quit (or worse, introduce complexity for the sake of it). LLMs are better at churning out boring stuff, and you can see a lot of bored people perk up in the age of AI - they can now fire up half a dozen agents so they can express their ideas and see them made reality, instead of leaving their idea…

I see what you're saying, but making things less boring by essentially gambling on the implementation of it is a pretty strange thing to do, in my opinion.

Sure, some people legitimately work on things that middle schoolers can put together, and for those things I suppose using LLMs as a way of just getting them done is a less risky prospect. For those cases I don't really see the point of tossing it over the hedge to LLMs because what exactly are you doing beyond that? These types of projects have almost nothing to actually do beyond the grunt work of wiring together MVC stuff.

It's not as if you're going to now have time for interesting things, as they tend to not exist at all in those types of projects, and they're rarely important or big enough to warrant much thought in terms of distributed systems design and so on.

I guess I can see a situation where someone instead finds time to work on actually interesting side projects because they've basically stopped doing their work manually because it's not something worth doing manually. Personally I don't think I could stand that type of situation because it would feel bad on a moral level as well as on a personal stimulation level.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#264

Post by Nextgrid »

sleight42 wrote: post #112

This isn't new. This should not be new. Make your shit work. Make it work well. Don't fuck with a thing that's working as desired. In this way, you'll make everyone's lives at least a little easier. This should be a mandatory teaching to anyone who wants to use the moniker of "engineer".

Not fucking with a thing that works as desired would put a large chunk of the tech industry out of a job.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#267

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #42
conrs wrote: post #8

Love this post. Surprisingly controversial; it hasn't made me very many engineering friends.

Yeah, it's pretty unpopular among people who like to try out new technology on every given project. I've found it extremely useful over the years, personally.

[deleted]

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#268

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #42
conrs wrote: post #8

Love this post. Surprisingly controversial; it hasn't made me very many engineering friends.

Yeah, it's pretty unpopular among people who like to try out new technology on every given project. I've found it extremely useful over the years, personally.

[deleted]

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#269

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #42
conrs wrote: post #8

Love this post. Surprisingly controversial; it hasn't made me very many engineering friends.

Yeah, it's pretty unpopular among people who like to try out new technology on every given project. I've found it extremely useful over the years, personally.

[deleted]
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