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Choose Boring Technology (2015)

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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#331

Post by treeman79 »

postfacto wrote: post #282
thewarrior wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job hopping programmers are compensated for how rare their skill is and not how much value they add to the business. It’s another flaw in capitalism. Reward employees a direct and substantial cut of the profits and incentivize to them to stay 5-10 years and these behaviors should disappear. The loss of job security, frequent job hopping has created more incentives to optimize for the next job switch and not value add…

Why the downvotes? This comment’s dead accurate.

Pure Capitalism punishes wasteful spending.

Assume company A sells a widget for 10 silver

Then company B comes along and sells same widget for 3 silver. Company A will either learn to be more efficient and sell at 2-3 silver, or go out of business.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#332

Post by spion »

real-dino wrote: post #321
BigJono wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I have about 13 years experience, have been senior in both enterprise, start-ups and everything in-between, and have basically the exact same view about front end dev as your original post. Except I fucking hate using Typescript, and totally wasn't expecting to see you mention you like it, given all the other stuff. IME all the same people that overengineer everything with god awful dependencies are the s…

I've used typed languages before (C#), and I've used Javascript for 8 or so year, and yep, I too can't see what the hell Typescript brings. I also used Haxe, which was a similar typed language, that compiles down to Javascript, and writing typed language for an untyped environment was an exercise in frustration. It's almost like the React trend to write CSS in javascript. It separates the end result from the code eve…

TypeScript is a fundamentally different type system to most of the other mainstream languages (similarities exist only in typed racket and clojure's core.typed). The fundamental differences stem from the fact that it tries and succeeds to model almost all existing expressive dynamic JS constructs. The resulting different features include:

* structural instead of nominal types (i.e. if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck)

* mapped types let you transform object types into other object types: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/2/mapped-types....

* conditional types let you apply conditional type transformations, and combine with mapped types to provide the equivalent of for comprehensions https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/2/conditional-t...

* template literal types let you generate dynamic string types on the fly, which you can use in various places including property names: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/2/template-lite...

and so on.

It does have a learning curve, and the tooling is annoying to set up.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#333

Post by danjac »

atom_arranger wrote: post #317
deckard1 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using React since 2014 or so. I can't speak for Angular or Vue, but I'm 100% sold on Svelte. It cuts out all of the crap that React and Redux introduced (lifecycles, hooks, boilerplate, etc.) and boils it all down to fundamentals. You can read the entire docs in a day and fully understand how everything fits together. I dare say it, but Svelte's docs are a breath of fresh air. It's rare that I read document…

I use a browser extension for checking out the tech stack of web apps. I haven't done it so much lately but a couple years ago whenever I would check an app with nice UX it was React, and if it was terrible UX it was Angular or something else. Also interested to see where Svelte will go. For my latest project I just didn't choose it because of lack of libraries.

Could it be that Angular was the tool of choice of enterprise , and enterprise UX notoriously sucks for all kinds of reasons tangential to technology?

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#334

Post by blacktriangle »

jjeaff wrote: post #300
eloff wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this theory, because I don't think there are many investors that actually care about the tech stack. If they are, I'd say they're bad investors. You could create a successful company on any tech stack. It's really like trying to invest in a company based on the way they decorate their HQ. Does it matter at all? Maybe only if it's ridiculously extravagant compared to their revenue.

I have had it be an issue with investors during the due diligence phase. We were very far along in the fund raising process when we got to the technical due diligence. They brought in an expert advisor to discuss our tech stack and he seemed very concerned that we were building on a php/mysql stack. They pretty much ghosted us soon after that meeting. Though they did not specify that as the reason, it seems most like…

That...is honestly shocking. Yes the programmer in me cringes at the though of going anywhere near php/mysql, but the business side of me looks at this stack as pragmatic, well documented, well understood, and easy to hire for.

On the other side I'm evaluating CL for my next endeavor since I personally find it to be my most productive language, but realistically I'll settle for Clojure and even then I'm worried if that is a bridge too far when it comes to the whole funding/due diligence issues.

I'd love to know what their export advisor considers the right decision?

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#335

Post by blacktriangle »

cema wrote: post #305
postfacto wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the downvotes? This comment’s dead accurate.

I am not sure about the down votes (no reason for them in my opinion) but the casual jab at capitalism looks gratuitous and does not help making the argument seem stronger.

Not to mention its objectively wrong.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#336

Post by jacobr1 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #279
vp8989 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The very best developers are capable, and avoid complexity. The next best developers are capable, and love complexity. The worst developers are not capable." It's not always in one's control to avoid complexity. The simplest solution to a problem in a lot of cases may be 2-3x the lift (simplicity tends to require more work, complexity is easy) and thus blocked by the business. A holistically simpler solution may be…

> The simplest solution to a problem in a lot of cases may be 2-3x This is such an important point. For whatever reason it has become ingrained in people's heads that the simplest solution must by reductionist logic be the easiest one. And therefore the easiest solution is the simplest one and it is good to be lazy and just introduce complexity everywhere.

The "right" solution is usually the one that models the underlying complexity of whatever phenomenon the the systems is addressing. If you make it simpler, inevitably you'll grow the system to address those use cases. Sometimes this is good, you don't want to err on the side of an overly-complex system. By this reasoning, I usually find building of evolvability and maintainability the be stronger guiding principles.

This is where the whole "MVP" concept got out of hand. MVP didn't mean an overly-simplified prototype. It meant solve one, narrower, problem well. This also pairs well with PGs "do things that don't scale" advice. You are taking on what others might think of additional complexity, to solve a very targeted problem more effectively from others, because using either deeper analysis or first-principles or whatever, you've actually better modeled the underlying complexity. Then you try to scale given those insights.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#337

Post by tluyben2 »

cutemonster wrote: post #327
tluyben2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder why investors love paying 5 figure aws bills; even worse, why they consider lower bills or not using 'the cloud' a sign of cto incompetence. Even if the company can run on $500 hosting instead. Must be because it is easy to do DD on: AWS, check, TS (JS is now a reason to not pass VC dd I heard from friends) check , React check, microservices, check, etc.

DD = due diligence?

Yes, sorry, should've said.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#338

Post by chris_wot »

blacktriangle wrote: post #334
jjeaff wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had it be an issue with investors during the due diligence phase. We were very far along in the fund raising process when we got to the technical due diligence. They brought in an expert advisor to discuss our tech stack and he seemed very concerned that we were building on a php/mysql stack. They pretty much ghosted us soon after that meeting. Though they did not specify that as the reason, it seems most like…

That...is honestly shocking. Yes the programmer in me cringes at the though of going anywhere near php/mysql, but the business side of me looks at this stack as pragmatic, well documented, well understood, and easy to hire for. On the other side I'm evaluating CL for my next endeavor since I personally find it to be my most productive language, but realistically I'll settle for Clojure and even then I'm worried if th…

php gets a bad rep. It was fair at one point, but not any more.

I’m not a huge fan of mysql, but have not used it in quite a while so I’m assuming things have improved considerably.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#339

Post by phendrenad2 »

BigJono wrote: post #184
austincheney wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been writing it full time about 13 years. I love writing in this language, and TypeScript even more. I am just frustrated by what appears to be some combination of insecurity, false expertise, and a vehement lack of passion in the work force. If I want to be happy I should move on to a different technology stack, but I really enjoy making products in this language.

It's funny, I have about 13 years experience, have been senior in both enterprise, start-ups and everything in-between, and have basically the exact same view about front end dev as your original post. Except I fucking hate using Typescript, and totally wasn't expecting to see you mention you like it, given all the other stuff. IME all the same people that overengineer everything with god awful dependencies are the s…

> These "seniors" lack even the most basic understanding of the shit they're using, but feel the need to impose their opinions about libraries, tooling and languages constantly.

Oh yeah, I feel this. The problem is many "seniors" went from junior->senior by being the big fish in a small pond (small startup + golfing buddies with the CTO) so they never had to question their own assumptions. Then they just glide from job to job at the senior level. It makes for monsters who can't differentiate their own personal preferences from industry best practices, and will attack your PRs if you go against either.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#340

Post by chris_wot »

blacktriangle wrote: post #335
cema wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure about the down votes (no reason for them in my opinion) but the casual jab at capitalism looks gratuitous and does not help making the argument seem stronger.

Not to mention its objectively wrong.

Except a. it’s not casual, it’s part of a thought through argument (which you can disagree with), and b. you fail to explain why he is wrong.
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