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Yagni Exceptions (2021)

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Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#161

Post by bcrosby95 »

jaza wrote: post #108
matsemann wrote: post #13

* Having all user-facing strings in a common place. It doesn't take much effort, but makes it so much easier in the future when you suddenly either need internationalization/translation (both tech side making the switch, but also gathering all the strings to send to some translator), or it's requested that these be managed by a cms of some sort instead of hardcoded all over the place.

I once worked on a large app that had always tried to support translation, but that had never actually been used by clients (after more than a decade running in production) in a language other than English. Well, what do you know, after all those years, finally a big client signed on, and this client needed the whole UI not in English. Trouble was, in practice there were gaps in the translation support all over the p…

I think this is one of the biggest problems with violating YAGNI. They're effectively dead code paths that are never truly being executed, and developers might assume they aren't full of bugs. But they oftentimes are.

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#162

Post by dogleash »

scott_w wrote: post #113
danwee wrote: post #11

Regarding the point about having a relational database: I was of the same opinion, but recently it has been challenged. We were working on a very simple application and one of the first requirements was: > User should be able to have a list of skills (e.g., Golang, Java, OOP, etc.). Users can be filtered by list of skills as well (e.g., "give me all the users with the skills "Java" and "OOP" but not ".net") So, the n…

Serious question: why is "having an extra table" considered such a challenge? I've seen this in a few places and it always raises alarm bells in my head.

Relational databases are one of those technologies where enough people can skate by enough of the time with just some very basic skills. And the skill curve in relational databases isn't offset by experience in other domains.

There's a number of technologies like this. They grow an air of mystery and impenetrability. Often unjustifiably so; many people would succeed just fine if they would go in unassuming and expecting to learn. It's why my interns can master things in a summer that some of my full-time people have been half-assing for years.

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#163

Post by MrZander »

no_wizard wrote: post #156
dkarl wrote: post #123

Rarely do I read something so specific about software development that I agree with 100%. One thing I would add: soft deletes in relational databases. There's a really good chance that eventually you'll need it for customer support, for debugging, or to fix nasty performance issues caused by cascading deletes. For some types of businesses, I wonder if "right to be forgotten" should be designed in from the beginning a…

I'm far more partial to the "deleted" table that simply removes the deleted entries from one table into another. Slightly more hassle on the recovery side (in the rare event), way less risk on the read side, and covers the 90% use case where most of the time its more useful for things like debugging. Only rarely in my career have I seen soft deleted data get restored, but you don't lose that this way, you simply miti…

Our current system uses soft deletes, and I wish we had done a "deleted" table. The biggest downside to soft deletes for us is that it ruins the default indexes cause every query has a !IsDeleted where clause added to it.

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#164

Post by Izkata »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #18
satyanash wrote: post #2

> I'm essentially a believer in You Aren't Gonna Need It — the principle that you should add features to your software — including generality and abstraction YAGNI is not a principle. It is a contextual thumb rule. A codification of expert intuition. Exceptions to thumb rules are quite the norm. Conflating thumb rules with principles is a sign of sloppy thinking. Often engineers will misuse terminology thinking that…

> Conflating thumb rules with principles is a sign of sloppy thinking Multiple dictionaries and thesauruses would disagree with you there. Rule of thumb is often defined in terms of "rules, procedures, principles, or... ...derived from..." Some sources say that "rule of thumb is a principle or procedure..."" So, you know, going straight to "sloppy thinking" reminds me of OldManYellsAtCloud.jpg. Anyway, I'm really not…

That they include "rules" and "procedures" indicates those definitions are based around the "what" rather than the "why". A rule of thumb is something passed down, while a principle is something you come to from experience. A rule of thumb likely started as a principle from someone else.

Rules and procedures are a further watering down of the original idea, where even the rule-of-thumb's justification isn't paid attention to or even has been lost over time.

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#165

Post by iLoveOncall »

Izkata wrote: post #132
iLoveOncall wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't worked with a lot of i18n systems, but on the contrary I have found them to be a huge amount of work. I have used the Angular one and the Laravel one, and both are a chore to use, because they interrupt your flow. If I'm writing the view of my component, I don't want to have to switch to another file, think of a key that identifies that text well enough and then translate the text, thinking of potential plu…

> I have used the Angular one and the Laravel one, and both are a chore to use, because they interrupt your flow. If I'm writing the view of my component, I don't want to have to switch to another file, think of a key that identifies that text well enough and then translate the text, thinking of potential plurals and others. I just want to write my damn text. In django (python), the key is just the English text (with…

It does the same in one of the two that I mentioned (Angular I believe), but you still need to mark plurals and other stuff like that.

Here is an example about a basic case that you will encounter multiple times per page:

  Updated: {minutes, plural,
    =0 {just now}
    =1 {one minute ago}
    other {{{minutes}} minutes ago by {gender, select, male {male} female {female} other {other}}}}

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#166

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

sethammons wrote: post #131
pindab0ter wrote: post #119

“Good logging” is mentioned here. Can somebody recommend a good write-up of what good logging consists of?

I've wanted to do that for a while. Look into structured logging. I want/need machines to analyze my logs, and that requires key value pairs. I put any dynamic text in its own field. "error for user 42, remote api timed out" -> level: error, userid: 42, message: api timeout, http_request: , timestamp: , time_duration_ms: 30000, ... (but as json). Now I can see what users are affected by which errors however often. Al…

The curl request log is a very interesting idea I have never seen before. Do you have a library recommendation or did you implement something yourself?

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#167

Post by dkarl »

sicromoft wrote: post #153
dkarl wrote: post #123

Rarely do I read something so specific about software development that I agree with 100%. One thing I would add: soft deletes in relational databases. There's a really good chance that eventually you'll need it for customer support, for debugging, or to fix nasty performance issues caused by cascading deletes. For some types of businesses, I wonder if "right to be forgotten" should be designed in from the beginning a…

Counterpoint: https://brandur.org/soft-deletion HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32156009

Thanks for the reminder -- I forgot one of the great benefits of soft deletes that I posted in that conversation. If your customer support can quickly investigate and resolve false reports of "my data disappeared without me deleting it" then they can pass along the rarer more mysterious cases to engineering, a lot of which will be real bugs. With hard deletes, all the reports look the same to customer support, so nothing gets passed on to engineering (or worse, everything does.)

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#168

Post by westernpopular »

satyanash wrote: post #2

> I'm essentially a believer in You Aren't Gonna Need It — the principle that you should add features to your software — including generality and abstraction YAGNI is not a principle. It is a contextual thumb rule. A codification of expert intuition. Exceptions to thumb rules are quite the norm. Conflating thumb rules with principles is a sign of sloppy thinking. Often engineers will misuse terminology thinking that…

You say

> The words you use highly influence your thought process[0].

Yet in the very article you link it says (emphasis mine)

> The strong version, or linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists.[3] > The weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.[4] Research on weaker forms has produced positive empirical evidence for a relationship.[3]

Your use of 'highly' would suggest a strong relativity, but that's discredited. Signed, a disgruntled linguist who's tired of people banging on about Sapir-Whorf.

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#169

Post by fknorangesite »

samatman wrote: post #78

This is very nearly off topic, but "Ain't" is the correct conjugation to pair with "Gonna". This form comes from Britain and is preserved in some dialects of American English, but "Aren't Gonna" is a partial hypercorrection; if we want acrolect, we must go all the way to "Aren't Going To". "You gonna be at the thing this weekend?" "Nah man I aren't gonna" wrong For the Commonweath, to whom this is no longer part of t…

This is a really weirdly specific set of prescriptivism that is easily countered by plenty of native English speakers who absolutely do use "aren't" and "gonna" together (myself, for example).

Re: Yagni Exceptions (2021)

#170

Post by adammarples »

robertlagrant wrote: post #159
adammarples wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, FK constraints are a good thing, they mean that one of your users doesn't have the "Python" skill while another one has the "Pytthon" skill. You need this - and with SQL it's extremely easy to implement.

Are you replying to the comment you mean to be replying to? :)

Yes, the one in which you considered FK constraints to be a waste of time
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