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Please. Reduction to absurdity isn't a valid argument. Are those folks working at large scales? Are they tuning DB's for applications which have to handle hu

by EpicEng 10y ago

Please. Reduction to absurdity isn't a valid argument. Are those folks working at large scales? Are they tuning DB's for applications which have to handle hundreds of thousands or millions of transactions per second? I don't imagine you actually know what you're talking about here.

throwanem 10y ago
> Reducing anything to absurdity isn't a valid argument. You're absolutely right! That applies to frontend dev, too. Anything is easy at trivial scale. Comparing trivial frontend dev to nontrivial everything else does nothing to advance the conversation.
- EpicEng 10y ago
  No, not everything is trivial at small scale. Scale is not everything in software development, it just happens to be the most common hard problem web devs will face. There's a whole world of software out there that isn't web development. Some problems are just hard, regardless of scale.
  - dunkelheit 10y ago
    Moving the goalposts. A comment above you have presented "tuning DB's for applications which have to handle hundreds of thousands or millions of transactions per second" as your example of a hard problem. Everything that is hard about it comes from scale.
WildUtah 10y ago
Reduction to absurdity isn't a valid argument. The Wik says Aristotle called it "ἐις ἀτοπον ἀπαγωγή" and reductio ad absurdum has been considered an important and valid form of argument for at least 2500 years. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
- EpicEng 10y ago
  That's nice. Not here though. Equating the technical complexity of learning a UI framework and designing back end systems is just silly and you know it. This is also not a form of reductio ad absurdum which fits the definition; it's just a silly linguistic reduction which excludes many important details.
  - orly_bookz 10y ago
    You're like a living version of this comic but for IT nerds... https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ (Just to be clear, in the IT version, you're not standing where the mathematician is.)
    - EpicEng 10y ago
      You have no idea what you're talking about. So much of the HN crowd wants so desperately to believe that what they do is meaningful and difficult, but in reality 90% of it is just trivial web dev BS that will be irrelevant in a few years. There is real engineering happening out there, but believe what you like.
      - nightski 10y ago
        You are the one who is confused. Something doesn't have to be difficult to have meaning.
dunkelheit 10y ago
Backend dev here. I think what JSDave says is not absurd and is actually spot on. The goal of an engineer is to make something that works reliably. Most of the time using old time-proven boring already-done-before stuff is the way to go.
- EpicEng 10y ago
  Sorry, gluing together JavaScript is not remotely engineering.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12657689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12657689 and marked it off-topic. Personal attacks like this violate the commenting guidelines.

by EpicEng 10y ago

throwanem 10y ago

> Reducing anything to absurdity isn't a valid argument. You're absolutely right! That applies to frontend dev, too. Anything is easy at trivial scale. Comparing trivial frontend dev to nontrivial everything else does nothing to advance the conversation.

EpicEng 10y ago
No, not everything is trivial at small scale. Scale is not everything in software development, it just happens to be the most common hard problem web devs will face. There's a whole world of software out there that isn't web development. Some problems are just hard, regardless of scale.
- dunkelheit 10y ago
  Moving the goalposts. A comment above you have presented "tuning DB's for applications which have to handle hundreds of thousands or millions of transactions per second" as your example of a hard problem. Everything that is hard about it comes from scale.

WildUtah 10y ago

Reduction to absurdity isn't a valid argument. The Wik says Aristotle called it "ἐις ἀτοπον ἀπαγωγή" and reductio ad absurdum has been considered an important and valid form of argument for at least 2500 years. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

EpicEng 10y ago
That's nice. Not here though. Equating the technical complexity of learning a UI framework and designing back end systems is just silly and you know it. This is also not a form of reductio ad absurdum which fits the definition; it's just a silly linguistic reduction which excludes many important details.
- orly_bookz 10y ago
  You're like a living version of this comic but for IT nerds... https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ (Just to be clear, in the IT version, you're not standing where the mathematician is.)
  - EpicEng 10y ago
    You have no idea what you're talking about. So much of the HN crowd wants so desperately to believe that what they do is meaningful and difficult, but in reality 90% of it is just trivial web dev BS that will be irrelevant in a few years. There is real engineering happening out there, but believe what you like.
    - nightski 10y ago
      You are the one who is confused. Something doesn't have to be difficult to have meaning.

dunkelheit 10y ago

Backend dev here. I think what JSDave says is not absurd and is actually spot on. The goal of an engineer is to make something that works reliably. Most of the time using old time-proven boring already-done-before stuff is the way to go.

EpicEng 10y ago
Sorry, gluing together JavaScript is not remotely engineering.

sctb 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12657689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12657689 and marked it off-topic. Personal attacks like this violate the commenting guidelines.