Nice using of the io domain there
Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
21–30 of 89 posts
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#22It's not really hinted at in the article, which doesn't actually mention whether the rewrite was a net gain - I presume it was or they wouldn't have written the article, and the lead-in picture paints a rosy picture, but the tone at the end suggests he's not happy with how things turned out. But one thing that used to be a common design anti-pattern was the "version 2 problem". I think I first heard about it when Net…
This has been my experience exactly. V1 was custom built for a single client and they loved it. As we tried to expand to multiple clients the v1 was too narrowly scoped (both in UX and code architecture) so we did a full rewrite attempting to generalize the app across more workflows. V2 definitely expanded our client pool, but all our large v1 customers absolutely hated it.
We never did a full v3 rewrite, but it took about 4 years and many v3 redesigns of various features to get our legacy customers on board.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which in turn were only invented because millennials would not be caught dead writing Java and JSP. We had all this shit figured out by the late nineties and 90% of what is accomplished on the web today was entirely possible and well integrated in Java app servers. This whole business is a fashion industry. I'm for one grateful for LLMs because for the first time in around 30 years there is actually genuine novelty t…
Mongodb is webscale.
Do you think it can handle 10 requests per hour? How many mongo instances will that require, and should I use micro services?
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#24Having a culture of not ever writing tests and actively disallowing them is so insane I can't even imagine why there's anything else in this post
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> they just stampede in with "THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY". And the discussion can't even be had.
That's exactly what this person is railing against. They strictly forbid testing.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Did I say that my way was the right way? No: what I said was actively disallowing tests in every situation was the wrong way. There is no ability here for the cost benefit analysis to change over time. There is only no tests
Did you edit the wording of your original comment slightly to emphasise the "actively disallowing them" in every situation? Anyway... if that is what you meant, then ok. It's less awful a statement than what I felt I originally read.
I'd still push back on your hyperbole though. I don't think the author was insane - and we don't know what the broader business context was when they started growing the team and decided to persist without building out the test architecture at that point. They made a call that dogfooding was going to be enough to catch issues as they grew the team. There are a lot of scenarios where that is going to be true.
One scenario where it wouldn't - the most likely - is that the team isn't actually dogfooding because they personally don't find the product useful. Leadership lambasts them to use the product more... but no one does cause it sucks so much it impacts their own personal productivity.
Even there I wouldn't use the word insane... just poor leadership.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did I say that my way was the right way? No: what I said was actively disallowing tests in every situation was the wrong way. There is no ability here for the cost benefit analysis to change over time. There is only no tests
Did you edit the wording of your original comment slightly to emphasise the "actively disallowing them" in every situation? Anyway... if that is what you meant, then ok. It's less awful a statement than what I felt I originally read. I'd still push back on your hyperbole though. I don't think the author was insane - and we don't know what the broader business context was when they started growing the team and decided…
> Did you edit the wording of your original comment slightly to emphasise the "actively disallowing them" in every situation?
I did not.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#27It's a big move. But I understand it.
Sometimes your code is "just" a proof of concept, a way to test the idea. Very far from a decent product.
That is the time you ditch the code, keep the ideas (both good and bad) and start over.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#28sorry, still don't get no tests as an excuse to go faster. obviously ymmv, but you will need to test your implementation somehow, and manual testing usually takes more time than running your automated tests. no need to over test, but definitely tests doesn't mean it will slow you down, unless you don't know how to test, which in that case, that's totally up to you.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> they just stampede in with "THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY". And the discussion can't even be had. That's exactly what this person is railing against. They strictly forbid testing.
Again - that's a business decision that needs to be made in the context of that business. The fact that testing was forbidden isn't in itself good or bad. It depends on that business context. THe post says nothing about how that decision was made, whether it was discussed, or if it was just his absolutist ideal he imposed without consideration of the broader cost-benefit.
And I still feel the original comment doesn't give this point enough weight.
Re: Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over
#30It's not really hinted at in the article, which doesn't actually mention whether the rewrite was a net gain - I presume it was or they wouldn't have written the article, and the lead-in picture paints a rosy picture, but the tone at the end suggests he's not happy with how things turned out. But one thing that used to be a common design anti-pattern was the "version 2 problem". I think I first heard about it when Net…
"The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile." - Fred Brooks, 'The Mythical Man Month' (1975)
Oh wow, it's from Mythical Man Month? I've been meaning to read that for years and still never have.