We have used too many levels of abstractions • Hacker News Board

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#211

Post by slibhb » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12

I think there is one interesting angle to this problem. I am someone who grew up with the technology, as the levels of abstractions were being added. I am now benefiting from all those accumulated decades of knowledge. As the IT / development world was changing, I had enormous privilege and comfort to learn the things at the pace they were happening. Being able to assimilate changes over long decades. Be a witness to…

This is a non-problem. If there's a shortage of people working at X level of abstraction (where X is possibly very low) then salaries for those with that knowledge will go up and more people will seek it out.

Free markets don't solve every problem but they solve this one.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#212

Post by Olreich » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #98

The other thing is that we've adopted the wrong abstractions on many occasions. Today, in the software industry, we have an arrogant mono-culture which believes that we're at the end of history and have figured it all out... But in fact, I believe we've gone down the wrong path with many more recent tech. I feel like everything was moving on the right direction until around 2014... Then it's like progress started goi…

Most likely, your framework Is productive for you not because it’s the best framework available, but because you wrote it and know the ins and outs of it and it matches up to how you think. This isn’t too day it’s not likely better than other frameworks in at least some ways, but familiarity begets expertise which begets productivity.

Many experts in drywall installation before drywall screws were popularized swear that screws are slower and worse. However, an expert nailer and an expert screwer both complete jobs just as quickly (if not faster for the screw-adherent), and just as well.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#213

Post by yieldcrv » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

embik wrote: post #4

yieldcrv wrote: post #2

this is the kind of thing you say during an interview, get rejected and then wonder if you just experienced ageism instead of any introspection about your own rant

Can you elaborate on that? What kind of introspection do you think the author is missing?

yes too much abstraction is bad

In the example at the end, people don’t necessarily need to know what files and folders are so its not bad that they dont know, it’s better for a new developer that they have a blank slate to learn about trees of storage paths, as the skeumorph is outdated. just like the save icon being a floppy disk was so outdated that instead of replacing it, people realized we dont actually need save icons anymore and everything should just always save

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#214

Post by kaba0 » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

mnky9800n wrote: post #168

spaniard89277 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im from the new breed. I'd like to know all that but, where do I get the money? It's not like I can spend so much time tinkering without producing. If at least was able to purchease a home I wouldnt have this pressure. I guess in the US is different because people have higher salaries. You have to have the time/resources to dive that deep. Or maybe it's your job, line some of the folks in a local company that work in…

Why do you need money to learn things? The internet exists. The library exists. Meetups exist. Go out and learn things you are interested in.

Not dying of hunger is a good motivator.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#215

Post by lordfrito » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #45

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12

I think there is one interesting angle to this problem. I am someone who grew up with the technology, as the levels of abstractions were being added. I am now benefiting from all those accumulated decades of knowledge. As the IT / development world was changing, I had enormous privilege and comfort to learn the things at the pace they were happening. Being able to assimilate changes over long decades. Be a witness to…

There will be an increasingly important history component in comp sci., software engineering, infosec, and associated fields. I think this is a place where the IT field has done a bad job and, as a result, we've had unbelievable amounts of "wheel reinvention". I'd love to hear from somebody with experience in scientific or other disciplines and IT who could contrast their fields with ours. I only know that I have had…

> Vernor Vinge was right, though-- software (and hardware) archaeologist will be a real job.

Spend some time in the coin op game community... This is all we spend our time on. Well that and cabinet repair.

But seriously though, keeping these old games alive requires serious reverse engineering of both hardware and software. Especially if they have custom chips, ASICs, undocumented features, etc. But the work has to be done or these games will be lost to time... It may be a passion project/ hobby, but it's still real work.

I like your point about digital archaeology. If it's important enough to some people to keep old arcade games running, how much more important is it to understand and keep some old mission critical computer running.

It's a lot like the tech people you see in these dystopian future movies, the ones who are like "oh yeah you have an old z80 with the qxp interface, haven't seen one of these things in years". Like Scotty from Star Trek. They're an increasingly important part of the tech ecosystem.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#216

Post by dudul » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

zubairq wrote: post #96

Having worked for many years in IT in Denmark I would say that the author is right, but many of these are luxury beliefs, since in Denmark people are given alot more time to do their job right than in many places. In many parts of the world developers are not given the time to understand anything, and end up working 8 hours after the job to understand the tools in their own time

How is Denmark so special in that regards?

What are examples of these places where people are not given the time to do their job right?

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#217

Post by vsareto » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #12

I think there is one interesting angle to this problem. I am someone who grew up with the technology, as the levels of abstractions were being added. I am now benefiting from all those accumulated decades of knowledge. As the IT / development world was changing, I had enormous privilege and comfort to learn the things at the pace they were happening. Being able to assimilate changes over long decades. Be a witness to…

>We, people who really understand the technology that the world runs on, are a slowly dying breed. We are still here as tech leads, managers, directors, business owners. But there will be a point in time when we will go on retirement and there will be only precious few people who had perseverance to really understand all those things by diving into obscure, historical manuals.

I'm gonna guess this same message, in different words, has been repeated often throughout history for as long as people had the ability to reflect on their life and the next generation.

So really, what's different this time? What's the difference between forgotten technology that nobody needs and an unpublished author who's works were forgotten? I think the answer is none. We just think it's more important because this is the industry we care about.

We're actually really good at reinventing the wheel in this industry, so even if some software is forgotten, you can probably bet it'll be reinvented or reverse-engineered if it's really needed.

While we should preserve technology knowledge (because it's pretty cheap to do so), in terms of the economy, sometimes things are a stepping stone and should be forgotten.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#218

Post by spacecadet » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

I think people generally think this stuff is "easy" and willingly ignore the layers of complexity.

Someone else pointed out surface level knowledge of power tool users... but thats always been the IT industry.

IMHO. You either have "this" ability or you don't. There will always be a few people who can think and design complex systems and then everyone else who thinks its easy but only understands it surface level.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#219

Post by tempe1h1 » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

foxhop wrote: post #174

bongobingo1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there good historical examples of this happening, where foundational knowledge is completely lost? I know I have read about it in books as a fiction, but I assume it must have already happened here before. Maybe its an oxymoronic question to ask, seeing as if its lost we might not even know its lost, but more in the vein of "We put the lime in the mortar because this is what we have always done", unaware of the a…

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Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#220

Post by hotpotamus » Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

fatnoah wrote: post #201

josephg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have never seen a dump of an HTTP message, headers and verbs are abstract things to them. When I was teaching programming, I had a fun party trick whenever we got to HTTP. I'd fire up netcat (in listen mode), then connect from a web browser and "serve" a website by hand. I'd show the students the HTTP request that came in, and just manually type out a simple HTTP response and they'd see it appear live in the b…

Not quite the same, but I remember sending emails via telnet. I showed that to a younger dev who was somewhat blown away by the fact it wasn't via some REST API.

Yes, I actually remember another tech showing me how to type "get / http(whatever)" into telnet to check a browser and that is when a lot of things clicked into place. Basically it was the realization that computers are just sending text back and forth at blindingly fast speeds. Obviously I had some sense of what was going on before, but that was the demo that did it, and I had to learn it on the job because no one at school ever did that, which I find sort of backwards - school should be where you play with that sort of thing, but I suppose we all learn differently.

The email telnet thing was also a good learning experience. Gmail's servers are fun because you can see the designer's cute messages; if you forget your EHLO, they'll throw an error (or at least they did years ago) that it's polite to say hello first.