151–160 of 374 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not used to see that amount of hate directed to fellow programmers in a hn comment.
There was no hate intended in my comment, but I can understand how you came to that conclusion. My experience posting on r/javascript of Reddit has taught me some developers are insecure, extreme conspiracy-theory paranoid insecure, about working without their favorite framework.
The way I see it is that one should master their stack. If you work over and over again with the same stack you will know it well. You will be able to move mountains with it. But it takes years to arrive to that. It takes implementing multiple projects the same way over and over again. You need the wherewithal to stick with your stack and not get lured away. Maybe this is what boring means. Maybe boring is different…
> The way I see it is that one should master their stack. If you work over and over again with the same stack you will know it well. You will be able to move mountains with it. But it takes years to arrive to that. It takes implementing multiple projects the same way over and over again. This is 100% how we did things for the last 5 years. We used the exact same basic tools & APIs, but iterated on how we integrated t…
I can understand this from the perspective of a manager or company owner. "Happiness comes from shipping products" or "Choose boring technology" make a lot of sense if you are maximizing profit and don't need to work with the tech yourself. If you are an engineer and you want to try a new technology, go for it. Even if it doesn't make sense. Learn new things, don't stick with the boring tech. Maximize your own happin…
This view feels so strange to me.
As an engineer, I find myself the happiest when I manage to build the simplest and the most maintainable thing for the business requirements. Extra happy, if it turns out we didn't paint ourselves into a corner when those requirements increase or change.
I just want to minimize my own tears in the future.
> If you are an engineer and you want to try a new technology, go for it. Even if it doesn't make sense.
Imagine how immoral this advice sounded like if it came from the mouth of a carpenter, an auto mechanic or a doctor.
Maybe this just activates my PTSD acquired from working in a startup with a long history of codecampers doing CV-Driven Development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a small business depending on the Etsy API during the time they transitioned some storage to Mongo. The immediate effect for us was a downturn in functionality and reliability with no apparent advantages. In the midst of other serious concerns about their direction, we questioned why Etsy was doing this on the API mailing list and were told basically we didn't know what we were talking about and it wasn't out b…
For anyone else curious, I found the postmortem here: https://mcfunley.com/why-mongodb-never-worked-out-at-etsy Which was compiled here: https://github.com/icy/w2w
Generalizations like “choose boring technology” are just unhelpful slogans. Truth is you should choose technology given consideration of its pros and cons, not on the basis of some slogan. There are very good reasons to use mature technologies and very good reasons to use current technologies and very good reasons to use absolute cutting edge technologies. When someone comes at your approach wielding a slogan, be ske…
For what it’s worth, it’s a great read that I would recommend to anyone in the industry.
They aren’t forcing technologies on you, but driving home the true cost of long term maintenance and investing in the “core stack” that you already have instead of adding N technologies to solve N business problems. This is good stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was no hate intended in my comment, but I can understand how you came to that conclusion. My experience posting on r/javascript of Reddit has taught me some developers are insecure, extreme conspiracy-theory paranoid insecure, about working without their favorite framework.
How much experience do you have working with JS?
The way I see it is that one should master their stack. If you work over and over again with the same stack you will know it well. You will be able to move mountains with it. But it takes years to arrive to that. It takes implementing multiple projects the same way over and over again. You need the wherewithal to stick with your stack and not get lured away. Maybe this is what boring means. Maybe boring is different…
I agree completely. Another angle that is less common is remaining at one company you believe and respects your work. If you find somewhere like that, years of working in the same domain can make you more effective. Not to speak of the advantages of a team that works together for 5+ years and the power that comes from true camradarie with your team mates. It's sad that most places - and by definition the largest plac…
I always found it funny that companies will go to extreme Herculean lengths to hire the best programmers, and are incredibly fearful and paranoid that they could be making a "bad hire", and yet once hired they don't spend a second making sure engineers aren't completely running the software product off the rails and killing the company internally. The author mentions trying to rewrite Etsy's backend in Scala and Mong…
> How many engineering managers can spot the common situation "the engineers are bored and they're rewriting perfectly-good codebases in Common Lisp and OCAML for funsies"? And how many know what to do about it when they see it? I think there is a tension between this kind of actively guiding anti-complexity management and hiring "top talent". The very best developers are capable, and avoid complexity. The next best…
It's not always in one's control to avoid complexity. The simplest solution to a problem in a lot of cases may be 2-3x the lift (simplicity tends to require more work, complexity is easy) and thus blocked by the business. A holistically simpler solution may be blocked politically because a certain team doesn't want to own some functionality etc ...
I would say the best developers can see complexity coming and have a healthy fear of it, the medium devs don't mind complexity and the worst devs can't get anything done without increasing complexity.