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Choose Boring Technology (2015)

boringtechnology.club

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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#221

Post by redisman »

onetom wrote: post #208
js4ever wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Node.js? It's super mainstream now. We have it in production since years, I see a LOT of companies migrating from everything else to node since years and it's a growing trend from what I see at my level with startups and even enterprises

Recommended "literature": 1. 10 Things I Regret About Node.js - Ryan Dahl - JSConf EU ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA ) 2. Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave | Lex Fridman Podcast #160 ( https://youtu.be/krB0enBeSiE )

Sure but there are all known issues to any Senior Devs. You don’t have to pull shady hairballs from npm for every little feature you can think of. I’ve ran node in production for the last 5 years so at least to me it counts as battle tested and “boring”.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#222

Post by soheil »

tpetry wrote: post #5

The problem with the non-boring technology club is that programmers see what problem FAANG companies are solving and wanting to be on the edge on new technology too. But they don‘t have the same problems. Another problem is they want to show what they can do. If they tell in an interview they are working with rails/django and a postgresql database they fear they look incompetent using those old technologies. So they…

> they want to show what they can do

Or more like it's the scarcity, by definition new tech still doesn't have many experts in it. So if you're one of the few that learns it you're all of a sudden pretty differentiated compared to your peers. Even if the new tech turns out to be pure garbage down the road it doesn't matter because in the meanwhile you can land the hippest jobs and win the admiration of your peers by being so far ahead of everyone else.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#224

Post by c-cube »

bitwize wrote: post #168
NomDePlum wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of good reasons to use NoSQL. All pretty much hang off what sort of data access pattern you need. If you have an application that retrieves an works on a top level entity then NoSQL fits very nicely. When you have a dataset that is shared and aggregate information is needed not so much and you are likely better of considering a SQL database of some sort.

> When you have a dataset that is shared and aggregate information is needed not so much and you are likely better of considering a SQL database of some sort. There are best practices for this. Simply create a microservice per table, and then create a microservice that acts as a client to the other services and aggregates or joins the data from those services. No, I'm not kidding. This is literally what people do and…

And remember to implement distributed 2 phase commit to guarantee consistency! So much simpler than using old crufty sql

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#225

Post by soheil »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

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…

> I always found it funny that companies will go to extreme Herculean lengths to hire the best programmers

Because you may know how to hire the best or have the skill to know who the best are, but you don't know how to be the best, so how can you judge their work if by definition you're not as good as they are?

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#227

Post by redisman »

stepbeek wrote: post #180
nizmow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically though, FAANGs still solve their problems with boring technologies.

I was very disappointed when I joined Amazon to learn we were using plain old Java with servlets (this was 2015, I think kotlin is more common now). Since leaving I’m in awe of how sensible the technical decision making that led to that was.

I interviewed with Stripe and one of the engineers mentioned they’re transitioning many services to a exciting new technology called... Java. That was in 2021

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#228

Post by dilyevsky »

nizmow wrote: post #31
tpetry wrote: post #5

The problem with the non-boring technology club is that programmers see what problem FAANG companies are solving and wanting to be on the edge on new technology too. But they don‘t have the same problems. Another problem is they want to show what they can do. If they tell in an interview they are working with rails/django and a postgresql database they fear they look incompetent using those old technologies. So they…

Typically though, FAANGs still solve their problems with boring technologies.

Not true - they use cutting edge tech that sprawls around sfba a few years later all the time. Maybe not on the web side bc you aint gonna add much value by doing that anyway

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#229

Post by DC1350 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

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…

Anyone in a hiring market that favors the job seekers has to look out for this. Employers typically see the employee as a tool to solve their problems, but I think a lot of managers don't pay attention to employees who use the company as a tool to further their careers. Resume driven development, chasing metrics, and self promotion are way faster routes to progress than actually doing a good job. Getting the job I want is a long process. I'm going to take the most direct route to that, and it's a manager's job to make sure our interests are aligned.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#230

Post by koonsolo »

twic wrote: post #64
phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

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…

There is one problem with this: It will get on the nerves of the developers that love simplicity.

I'm one of those, and it really gets on my nerves when systems are overengineerd, or use tech that has more drawbacks than benefits for our specific case.

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