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In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

danluu.com

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Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#11

Post by Shrezzing »

I'd argue that this article could be read more like "start as a monolith, and then move towards microservices when sensible", except the penny hasn't fully dropped for the author that the sensible time for their organisation is right now.

The company appears dogmatically locked into their idling python code, their SQL making unpredictable commits, and their SQL framework making it difficult to make schema migrations.

This is a financial services company describing data-integrity bugs in their production platforms.

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#12

Post by robertlagrant »

zer00eyz wrote: post #10

Early in my career one of the IT guys told me that one of the people on staff was "a technical magpie". I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he said "He has to grab every shiny piece of tech that shows up and add it to the pile". This is where we are. I can't tell you how many times I have seen projects get done just to pad a PM or developers resume. Just because it was the lastest and greatest hot shit thing to…

I understand that's your opinion, but could you show me some badly designed user research results to make this conversation more data driven?

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#13

Post by gherkinnn »

rugger wrote: post #8

Monolith is fine if you have a fairly simple process for manipulating your data. Like posting an article, then a comment, with some moderation thrown in. But when you start adding business rules, and start transforming your data and moving it around, then your monolith will become too complex and often too expensive to run. Lots of moving parts tightly coupled together, long-running transaction wrapping multiple join…

Most CRUD software is little more than the simple processes you describe. At least intrinsically. And if it isn't, it started off being that.

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#14

Post by zer00eyz »

gherkinnn wrote: post #4

I'm going to agree with Dan Luu by asking where I can find more of these sane companies. I want to spend an honest 6h a working day improving a product (Terraform and Webpack are not the product) and spend the rest of my time tending to my garden.

You aren't looking for a job.

You're looking for a lifestyle business.

They are great. You will get time in the garden, that's awesome.

Vacation someplace with no phones? Out of the question. Weekend in a 3rd world country with character and food and sketchy internet. Not gonna happen.

You want to optimize for free time in the garden by all means you can do it, but you loose out in other places, you pick up other work (taxes, systems etc).

Edit: Down vote away, I live this life now, my tomatoes are delicious and I make yogurt too!

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dawnofdusk wrote: post #9
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of which are justified in the post. Like, complexity where it makes sense is a good thing, especially if that complexity brings benefits. Complexity for the sake of complexity is foolish.

Enough of this strawman one-liner "complexity for the sake of complexity". Unnecessary complexity is introduced because someone once thought it was necessary. It may not be necessary anymore, or (even worse) it might have not even been necessary at the time and the person who introduced it was just wrong. But all complex architectures start because people think it will bring benefits.

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#16

Post by zmgsabst »

zer00eyz wrote: post #10

Early in my career one of the IT guys told me that one of the people on staff was "a technical magpie". I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he said "He has to grab every shiny piece of tech that shows up and add it to the pile". This is where we are. I can't tell you how many times I have seen projects get done just to pad a PM or developers resume. Just because it was the lastest and greatest hot shit thing to…

When has a decision that’s bad for the decision maker ever been popular?

We see it in the C-suite; we see it with engineers.

I think the travesty of so-called “principal engineers” and “engineering leaders” is their adamant refusal to make doing the Right Thing (TM) sexy.

Your employees are monkeys: act like it.

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#17

Post by notso411 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #14
gherkinnn wrote: post #4

I'm going to agree with Dan Luu by asking where I can find more of these sane companies. I want to spend an honest 6h a working day improving a product (Terraform and Webpack are not the product) and spend the rest of my time tending to my garden.

You aren't looking for a job. You're looking for a lifestyle business. They are great. You will get time in the garden, that's awesome. Vacation someplace with no phones? Out of the question. Weekend in a 3rd world country with character and food and sketchy internet. Not gonna happen. You want to optimize for free time in the garden by all means you can do it, but you loose out in other places, you pick up other wor…

[dead]

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#18

Post by blueflow »

robertlagrant wrote: post #12
zer00eyz wrote: post #10

Early in my career one of the IT guys told me that one of the people on staff was "a technical magpie". I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he said "He has to grab every shiny piece of tech that shows up and add it to the pile". This is where we are. I can't tell you how many times I have seen projects get done just to pad a PM or developers resume. Just because it was the lastest and greatest hot shit thing to…

I understand that's your opinion, but could you show me some badly designed user research results to make this conversation more data driven?

> more data driven

Any other engineering discipline. What are common practices in IT would be negligence in other disciplines and might get your permit/license removed.

IT is the only sector where companies like Cisco or SAP can exist despite the horrible reliability of their products.

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#19

Post by thimp »

zmgsabst wrote: post #16
zer00eyz wrote: post #10

Early in my career one of the IT guys told me that one of the people on staff was "a technical magpie". I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he said "He has to grab every shiny piece of tech that shows up and add it to the pile". This is where we are. I can't tell you how many times I have seen projects get done just to pad a PM or developers resume. Just because it was the lastest and greatest hot shit thing to…

When has a decision that’s bad for the decision maker ever been popular? We see it in the C-suite; we see it with engineers. I think the travesty of so-called “principal engineers” and “engineering leaders” is their adamant refusal to make doing the Right Thing (TM) sexy. Your employees are monkeys: act like it.

Yep. Microservices! AWS! Everything Gartner and Thoughtworks says! It'll look good on my resume...

..several years later..

Escalating cloud costs, high staffing cost, staff turnover, heavily reduced margins, decreased productivity, burnout, clients unsatisfied, C-suite paving over this by hiring more marketers...

Re: In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022)

#20

Post by simonbarker87 »

Our stack is a NestJS server, Handlebars templates for SSR, htmx and a PostgresSQL database. Deployed as a container on GCP Cloud run with a Github action. It's delightful to work on and very responsive in a way that a React app with the same data load wouldn't be. At this point it would take a pretty massive reason to get me to adopt the SPA approach again.
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