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We have used too many levels of abstractions

unixsheikh.com

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Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#241

Post by pawelmurias »

bakugo wrote: post #229
kaba0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, this is some elitist nonsense. Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. There is no shortage of young people that work on areas that makes them require deep knowledge of many different layers of the stack, it is simply not necessary for every IT-related job. But one can absolutely pick…

> Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. The HTTP protocol, HTML and vanilla JS are not "the OS layer", and yes, it's part of your job as a web developer to at least understand the basics of them. There are many so-called "frontend devs" nowadays who literally only know React, and if you asked them to cre…

Shit developers used to cobble something together in PHP and had a bunch of horrid code on the web to copy and paste. Looking up some deeper part of the stack is not that hard for a legit dev.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#242

Post by acheron »

treadmill wrote: post #95
cjalmeida wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get ahead very far with a 16h free course on kernel development https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/a-beginners-gu... A motivated person can run through it in a couple weeks while working a day job.

Ugh, why do they want me to register to access a free course.

Data collection, of course.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#243

Post by zdragnar »

bakugo wrote: post #229
kaba0 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, this is some elitist nonsense. Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. There is no shortage of young people that work on areas that makes them require deep knowledge of many different layers of the stack, it is simply not necessary for every IT-related job. But one can absolutely pick…

> Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. The HTTP protocol, HTML and vanilla JS are not "the OS layer", and yes, it's part of your job as a web developer to at least understand the basics of them. There are many so-called "frontend devs" nowadays who literally only know React, and if you asked them to cre…

I think the critique is that you're applying this too narrowly to front end developers.

Pretty much anyone who has been around long enough has met someone with years and years of experience doing exactly one thing, whether that's WordPress or java CRUD or something else where they have blindingly obvious gaps in their knowledge that someone with their experience shouldn't.

The lack of deep knowledge isn't limited to a single field.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#244

Post by mordae »

mrkeen wrote: post #28
kyahwill wrote: post #11

I somehow agree with this. As a web developer who started on a framework first approach (Vue + Django), I was having one hell of a time trying to figure things out because of my lack of fundamental knowledge. I think abstraction is okay but you have to understand that just because you can make abstractions doesnt mean you should.

I had a similar starting point (spring web apps), but reached a different conclusion. The layers and layers of indirection obscured what HTTP is for me, and it took me too long to understand it. Have a look at https://learnbchs.org/easy.html for a real "oh that's what HTTP is?" moment.

I usually teach HTTP with `nc example.com 80` and then `nc -lp 8080` plus a browser.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#245

Post by igortg »

demondemidi wrote: post #228

Old man yelling at cloud vibes. Yes some people are experts and some are just adequate. Nothing new here. Not everyone can be a messiah like the author, who spends half of this short essay telling us how great he is. This article has almost nothing to do with abstraction. The author loses interest in his own thesis after the first two paragraphs.

Same feeling. How this article came up to the top? The example he gives is terrible "someone used a modern framework was hacked, but the performance was not caused by the hacking, but the frameworks was terrible slow" - Ok, which was the framework? How did you find it was slow just by looking at a diffs? What someone not knowing how to trim a tool for performance has to do with abstractions?

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#246

Post by internet101010 »

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…

>as a result, we've had unbelievable amounts of "wheel reinvention".

During the crypto boom I distinctly remember hearing someone say something about creating a decentralized Discord. I was like... that's IRC.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#247

Post by MyFirstSass »

nologic01 wrote: post #239
MyFirstSass wrote: post #236

As a 15+ years webdev my recent projects in the front-end are almost pure "vanilla JS" (Just JS) + Html, and CSS with only Petite Vue / Alpine on top. I find the modern Vue, React etc. stacks absolutely insufferably complex and prone to breaking in 1000 places each time you upgrade some package, or change som random thing in the already stupidly complex "Tooling/Build" chains people are setting up by default. And it'…

you would need to add alpine.js or something equivalent though. there is nothing wrong with a few core libraries that are long-lived, thoroughly debugged and understood etc.

You are totally right, i actually forgot that Petite-Vue is the only core library i'm using atm, also tried Alpine and they are great.

And their tiny scopes are actually nice dogmas to play around, i haven't yet experienced them not being enough, and when they aren't you hack together some stuff to extend them, and that actually makes coding fun again. It's like the demoscene, it's way more fun to code with some restrictions and limitations you have to be creative to solve, instead of setting up some dependency/folder hell.

Optimize, minimise, make more elegant, make more readable, that is where the fun is!

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#248

Post by Sakos »

notarobot123 wrote: post #198
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to figure it out is not specific to a generation. My generation had magazines and forums. Then came out google and SO. Now chat gpt. The difference is where you start figuring things out. Before, you needed to figure things out at your level, because it was the immediate area of mystery. Now this level is generally solved, you need to figure things out at a different level: - filter out the mass of irrelevant…

It's fair to say that these are different kinds of "figuring out" though. Learning by trial and error is distinct from learning how to find and synthesize information and each lead to very different outcomes over the long-term. I'd argue that the "find and synthesize" generation have an advantage within contemporary software paradigms because of their experience but, without deep knowledge of the foundations they are…

Trial and error is a fundamental part of how we work as human beings. There is no learning or understanding without it and no "figuring it out" without it. So that dichotomy between "trial and error" and "find and synthesize" doesn't exist. They are the opposite sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other.

Finding and synthesizing doesn't do you any good if you're unable to meaningfully apply it or understand what you're applying and what you're applying it to.

Trial and error also doesn't do you much good without the ability to back it with knowledge and to find the relevant knowledge.

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#249

Post by yieldcrv »

userbinator wrote: post #30
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

No, this is the kind of thing you say during an interview, get rejected, and then realise you were probably not going to like the work environment anyway.

That’s cope, none of the flags in an interview have anything to do with anything, especially after taking enough jobs to you realize that you’ll probably get called in last minute to interview additional people with no preparation whatsoever on the interview process so you just google a couple things to ask and wing it yourself

Re: We have used too many levels of abstractions

#250

Post by userinanother »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #124
ksec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can actually see this with new frontend devs. They know only full SPA frameworks, ...... Around I guess 2017 or even 2016? I used to think this is some sort internet troll comment about people never seen a dump of an HTTP message, until...... >Because they started with assembly. It wasn't necessary starting with assembly or something low level. ( Although that certainly helped ) We have less entertainment, more…

Having to figure it out is not specific to a generation. My generation had magazines and forums. Then came out google and SO. Now chat gpt. The difference is where you start figuring things out. Before, you needed to figure things out at your level, because it was the immediate area of mystery. Now this level is generally solved, you need to figure things out at a different level: - filter out the mass of irrelevant…

Agree with everything except out of date info. The old stuff is the good stuff you can’t find anymore because Google thinks you don’t want it. the newly generated SEO ai shit is what you need to filter out
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