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My Response to “Are we overcomplicating software development?”

94 points by feyn 10y ago

chrisbolt 10y ago
Response to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13426896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13426896
Analemma_ 10y ago
The point about "Agile the philosophy" being better than "Agile the practice" seems like a red herring to me, since so few get "Agile the philosophy" right. It's the same way I feel about things like HATEOAS: maybe it's good as a Platonic ideal, but if no one is reaching that ideal, then how useful is it really? There need to be suggestions that we can actually put into practice.
- zpallin 10y ago
  Exactly my problem with Agile. The philosophy is immense and hard to follow. Everyone sees it differently. The practice of it, thus, is always unique, and never consistent. We need something better.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    Agile is never wrong: it is only the humans that have failed it. More consulting, of course, is required.
    - rubidium 10y ago
      It sounds like you're being sarcastic, but in case you're not. Process is built for people, not people for the process.
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      That second line is the only thing that distinguishes Agile from communism ;)
  - matwood 10y ago
    > The practice of it, thus, is always unique, and never consistent. And it should be unique for the team. The software process is not very transferable because people are not transferable (in addition to many other things that are also not transferable). Each team is different and the agile process should reflect that difference. Assuming there is not a lot of employee turnover, the team should become more consistent over time on a given project.
    - fusiongyro 10y ago
      I suggest then that what you have isn't a process. McDonalds has a process. The process makes it so that no matter which McDonalds you go to, you always get the same food. If your "process" works differently with different people, what you have is indistinguishable from not having a process.
      - feyn 10y ago
        Your point is difficult to refute. My thought is as follows: McDonalds is designed around the core idea that people are fungible and that mediocrity is optimal result (by "mediocrity" I mean no better, but no worse than the average hamburger). I do not believe that software development resources are fungible due to the high degree of creativity and independent decision making required to strike the best balance of quality and time-to-market, and often mediocre results can hurt companies during critical stages of growth. With that in mind, do we then say "If resources are not fungible and results cannot be mediocre then process cannot exist"? My answer is "no." A lack of resource fungibility does demand an individualized approach to training new resources on the process as it exists at a point in time, but provided resources do not change, the process itself should not change much outside of evidence-based optimization, i.e. "this ain't workin' so we better change somethin'" To me, process is about expectation management. Every other aspect of a process is in support of maintaining or exceeding expectations. I believe that if a process is so catered to individual whims that no expectations can be reliably set, then there isn't a process. Having said that, I do believe you can achieve a relatively consistent level of meeting and/or exceeding expectations with a process customized to the individual needs of the team members. Still, your point is very valid. Mine were only additional thoughts inspired by your astute observation.
  - EdSharkey 10y ago
    To me, the real issue is that the managers got ahold of agile. Most managers just want waterfall, I'm convinced, which I suspect is where so much of the head scratching about Agile comes from. We developers have done an abysmal job developing, socializing, and formalizing our standards and practices. Needing to keep agile things loose because teams and industries and people and projects differ is one thing. But, we don't even try to establish unambiguous definitions for general topics like test-driven development, big visible charts, or sprints. Frankly, we need industry leadership and earned certifications for developer craftsmanship. Uncle Bob recently has shared some good food for thought in this area. Not only does he recommend the direction we professional devs need to head, but he also speculates as to what will happen if we don't (loss of freedom.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc
    - bluGill 10y ago
      Managers don't want waterfall. They want a process they can understand (waterfall is great here), that gives them a specific date they can point to as when everything is done and they can start making money. Waterfall says it gives you that. Of course we all know that waterfall doesn't actually give you what it claims, but it says when it doesn't you failed to manage one of the early phases correctly which means it tells them how to fix things: work harder there.
      - feyn 10y ago
        Ooo! I wrote another article talking about single date estimations: https://neilonsoftware.com/2016/07/13/a-far-too-brief-rough-outline-of-how-to-approach-single-date-estimation/ https://neilonsoftware.com/2016/07/13/a-far-too-brief-rough-... Yes, a specific date is absolutely what every manager at every level in the organization wants. As long a payroll is issued bi-weekly, and earnings reported quarterly, the desire for a fixed date will be a thing. The issue is, fixes dates when it comes to new software development is a fantasy. If you really, really wanted to talk to experts about hitting dates, I'm thinking that a well-funded initiative done in collaboration with 3 of the 4 branches of the U.S. military and the most respected innovator in aviation technology would be where you would go to find them. I would like to offer up the F-35 Joint Strike/Fighter program as exhibit 'A'. Turns out, despite all that funding and discipline (and threats of what will happen if you miss a deadline), they still can't hit their dates. If they can't, what hope do we have? That's not a rhetorical excuse - that's a real question. Is the answer Agile? Personally, I don't think it is. I think Hollywood has a far better model that anyone else does (pre-production -> production-> post-production). To get new ideas, I study how specific movies are made. One of my favorite case-studies is how they did "Max Max: Fury Road" (lots of storyboards - lots and lots and lots of storyboards). "But hollywood movies are always late/overbudget!!!", yes - which is my point. They know that and have specific adaptions that make this process work decade over decade - and generally a hell of a lot of cash in the process. At a minim, if Agile ain't workin' for everyone, we've got to try to get new ideas from somewhere. My personal choice is Hollywood.
- feyn 10y ago
  (I'm Neil, the author) I do agree with you. I about learned Agile first from my mentor (his formative years were in the 80s) who I did and do still deeply respect, but over time he and I disagreed over the nature of what Agile is and what it should result it as I gained more real-world experience. I honestly have no answers as to specific suggestions that work for everyone. I've even asked teams where I implemented Agile practices what they though of my interpretation and the response I get is "Dunno...works fine to me." The best advice I can offer has nothing to do specifically with Agile, but pertains to my experience customizing agile to an organization. I don't mean to plug my "book" (especially since I don't make money from it), but the best advice I can give anyone I put in here: https://neilonsoftware.com/books/personality-patterns-of-problematic-projects/ https://neilonsoftware.com/books/personality-patterns-of-pro... Flawed and incomplete I know, but the best I could think to do.
bluetwo 10y ago
Yes, Very much so. Could not agree with the author more.
- feyn 10y ago
  Careful - I know that guy (I am that guy). He hardly knows what he's talking about half the time, and for the other half he makes it up as he goes along. Seriously though, glad you liked it.
zpallin 10y ago
I agree with ian0's perspective, but I am compelled by Neil. I think we can learn a lot of patience about the state of software development from this article.
- feyn 10y ago
  I appreciate that - thank you.
agentultra 10y ago
"Process," is the answer to the question, "how do we get a team of talented engineers to design and implement software together?" The answer to what should that process be? I'd look to the SWEBOK[0] for an introduction to the state of the art. As for the question at stake here... let me use the words of someone much smarter than myself: > Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better. > Dijkstra (1984) On the nature of Computing Science (EWD896) If you don't appreciate the true difficulty of programming you're bound to create problems and spend most of the rest of your time debugging them later on. If your chief motivation is to sell a software product or service powered by software then it behooves you to create complexity. It seems more impressive when you can't explain why some component or feature doesn't work in a single sentence. You just want to control that complexity enough so that you can maintain the illusion of order. If you want to achieve simplicity you have to work at it. It's hard and doesn't come for free. You really have to think. There's no way around that. [0] https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/index;jsessionid=306e197849715725b82e977c6b54 https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/index;jsessionid=306e197...
- feyn 10y ago
  (I'm Neil, the author) I can't find a "like" button anywhere, so I'll just say "Like".
- vorotato 10y ago
  There's always the functional style of write something inanely simple and use massive words to describe it.
BerislavLopac 10y ago
I upvoted it at "Microservices are a concept, not an implementation."
- feyn 10y ago
  Thank you! I'm not sure when the industry confused that point, but I guess I can understand how.
- twic 10y ago
  I don't really understand what it means.
  - feyn 10y ago
    This is a good place to start: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html The opening sentence sets the tone well for the article well: "'Microservices' - yet another new term on the crowded streets of software architecture." A colleague of mine once said that his work (he was a business strategist) was "slowly coming into focus." We're pretty far along today in our understanding of microservices, but at the time the article was written (early 2014) microservices were "slowly coming into focus". Reading what people where thinking when the industry was trying to define them should help in understanding what they are today.
nroach 10y ago
Why does this need its own thread? (Other than ego-stroking the OP) Seems like any response could be in the main thread or linked from there rather than splitting the discussion.
- feyn 10y ago
  (I'm the author) My bad. No excuses.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    I upvoted it. I'm glad you posted it.
    - feyn 10y ago
      Thanks, I appreciate it. nroach does have a point. I made a judgement call, and can see both sides of if it was a good one.
- jMyles 10y ago
  Are we running out of threads? :-) Threads are cheap and this came to my attention more strongly this way than if it had just been a comment. Every piece of prose posted here is, in some way, a response to something. I'm not sure it's "ego-stroking," strictly speaking. What's wrong with giving the author recognition?
  - feyn 10y ago
    (me = author) FWIW, I can totally understand how it could come across as ego stroking. In this particular case I wasn't trying to, but I have been guilty of it in my life. As for recognition, trust me - give it a week and no one will remember my article ever existed. I honestly just wanted to answer ian0's question thoughtfully, and made the best call I could think of.
- etjossem 10y ago
  Because this isn't just a response, but a piece of long-form content which stands well on its own. We generally use submissions for those. Comments are a great venue for short-form replies, but not for multi-page analyses of an interesting question.
sopooneo 10y ago
I agree with a lot of this, but I think there is a single correct answer for the best way to first learn about the "Agile Philosophy": http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/
- feyn 10y ago
  (I'm the author) Well...yes...and that's where (I hope) most people will start. What happens next, I've found, is that people's own confirmation bias' kick in, and they take the manifesto and make it describe (in their own mind) what they are already doing and/or want to do. The manifesto (to me) is how people who understood the nature and goals of Agile summarized their sprawling, complex, interconnected - and valid - thoughts. At the risk of being hyperbolic, I think of it like E = MC^2. Yes, that is a good summary of Einstein's theories, but if all you ever know of them is this summary you'll miss all the implications of what happens when you put it into practice. Probably a terrible example, but the best I could think of.
mindcrime 10y ago
(in regards to the original post that started this) I could rant for hours about how so many misuse the term "Agile" and the misunderstanding the idea(s) behind being agile. But I'm at a point where I almost don't care anymore. The use of "Agile" as though it describes a specific, prescriptive methodology is so ubiquitous that it's almost impossible to talk about the subject. Let me just say this... go read the Agile Manifesto before issuing any criticism of "Agile" and repeat this 10 times - "Agile is NOT a methodology". Scrum is a methodology. Crystal is a methodology. RUP is a methodology. XP is a methodology. OpenUP is a methodology. TSP is a methodology. One or more of those methodologies may be "agile", but "Agile" itself is NOT a methodology.
- feyn 10y ago
  (me = author) My bones ache from seeing Rational Unified Process mentioned, but of course you are correct. I would say I was "at the point where I almost (didn't) care" about 5 years ago. I then switched jobs and was made lead of a team I cared about, and decided I wasn't done with implementing Agile. There was a time, however, when I was downright apathetic. Companies had beaten me down too much, and I didn't have the energy to fight anymore, so I completely understand.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    Interestingly enough, I'm actually a fan of RUP, IF you instantiate it without requiring all the UML artifacts and what-not. One thing I like about RUP is that it emphasizes that you perform work in each area (requirements, design, implementation, etc.) in each iteration. To me, it emphasizes the "iterative" aspect of "iterative development" better than, say, (naive) Scrum. I also prefer the term "iteration" to "sprint" because the "sprint" analogy breaks down in that you can't actually SPRINT -> SPRINT -> SPRINT -> SPRINT forever and ever in reality. And to me, it just creates the wrong mindset. Admittedly it's a minor quibble though.
    - feyn 10y ago
      I learned RUP before Agile, and didn't hate it. I only learned if you like one thing you necessarily have to hate something else later in life. Aspects of RUP make it into my interpretation of agile. For example, I teach my dev teams UML (sketching as defined in Fowler's book) for whiteboarding and the rare BDUF, which RUP exposed me to. Speaking of BDUF, I've saved many a feature by resorting to BDUF when communication broken down. I didn't and don't want to start a flame war, but needless to say once in an interview I was asked if I was a "Scrum Master" (after having about 15 years of agile experience). When I stopped laughing, I said, "No, no I am not." I don't think they got the joke, and no - I didn't get the job. I don't think "iteration" vs "sprint" is a minor quibble. I've seen the "wrong mindset" you speak of, as people take "sprints" far too literally. It's not a sprint, it's a jog. A long, long jog. You'll be stopping for water and stretching along the way. Sprinting is a good way to pull a muscle and have all your devs quit on your one day, leaving you with a big-old case of backlog rhabdomyolysis. I took that analogy way too far.
ChicagoDave 10y ago
Cloud DevOps is complex, but we're just moving on-prem complexities and hardware complexities to the cloud, so it's a fair trade. Microservices, when done properly, are significantly less expensive than traditional service layers. Continuous Integration is one of the greatest improvements in software development.
- feyn 10y ago
  1) Yes, plus security concerns...that were really always there because clearly all those enterprise firewalls were not stopping anyone. Just ask Yahoo. 2) "When done properly" - therein lies the rub. 3) Absolutely agree, but I have seen teams screw it up time and time again. Never really figured out why that is.
  - goalieca 10y ago
    I suppose #3 might fail because of the "frog in boiling water". If you throw a frog in boiling water it will freak out. But if you throw a frog in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, it will never notice. I actually like to submit completed modules when they are ready. I find constant pushing makes things a lot more complicated. edit: fix terrible spelling
    - feyn 10y ago
      Re: #3, perhaps so. I have seen many a good CI process go to hell over time. I could argue no one would have a CI process if in the beginning it wasn't making life easier. It would seem no CI process survives contact with the dev team. Re: Modules, generally I do as well, but what is a "module"? A function? A class? A library? A plugin? An extension? A listener? A handler? A subscriber? A publisher? A DAO? A DTO? An in-memory service? A networked service? A microservice? The philosophy that I subscribe to is continuous integration is not the same as "everyone check into the same branch anytime they want as often as they want" but also that it is not "everyone work in their own branch until time has run out and we have to force all of our stuff to work together." That middle ground can be very tough to find, but I find that if the CI system and the architecture are not designed to work together, devs will always thrash around between those two extremes.
deleted 10y ago
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keithnz 10y ago
I'm not sure this article is really saying too much at all. I started with extreme programming back in 99 (after following the proponents and all the heated discussions on the most brilliant OTUG email list) Many many times I have seen this kind of question, "Aren't we just making this too complicated?" and the response being "It's not complicated, if you misunderstand X Y or Z you are probably going wrong" My observation is, many things of the things we leverage in the software world are answers to problems. Some of those answers seem so good, and work brilliantly when combined with other answers we package a set of answers as a "process / methodology" and advocate it. But sometimes for some people the answers don't really match the problem, or need adapting to the problems at hand. Now, without good insight into the original problems, then YES it will be "too complicated". Any time you do things for problems you don't really have it is A phrase that was thrown around in the early days of XP was "Brain Engaged", to try and highlight that you don't blindly do things, you need to be aware why you are doing something and adapt as necessary. However! If someone says "hey this new new way of approaching design is awesome", and it piques your interest, You should blindly learn/try that something new and debug it till you get an understanding of why it was considered awesome. At that point you can brain engage it as needed. So back to the original question, yes, we do make things too complicated and we shouldn't do things that don't make sense. It may not make sense because we have the knowledge and experience to know it doesn't, or it doesn't make sense because we are too inexperienced. Both are valid reasons to stop and start asking what is going wrong? why isn't this working? In the world of "Lean" this is the idea of "Stop the line", sort things out, start moving forward again, even if slowly at first. All that doesn't mean you should keep things really basic without changing, it is very important to know how to adopt ideas for doing things better and that actually contribute to things we care about. Also important to try not to become a cynic, eg, "tried microservices, they suck, OO sucks, imperative sucks, VB sucks, NoSQl sucks". When we become cynical of something it becomes very hard to be brain engaged in regards to them. Also the opposite is true, becoming enamoured with something can limit our brain engagement also like "Functional program all the things!, unit test all the things!, scale all the things! deep learn all the things! distribute all the things! Reactive all the things! things! the all Forth"
- feyn 10y ago
  "I'm not sure this article is really saying too much at all" I believe to be accurate, and I'm the author. I wasn't so much as making a statement or a point as addressing the questions in the best best way I knew how. If "The Dude" wrote a response to Ian0's original question, I would think it would have a similar sentiment to mine, though far more concise: "Yeah man...but, you know - no man."
gandutraveler 10y ago
OP vs this response is great example of gaps in "actual usage" vs concepts

94 points by feyn 10y ago

Response to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13426896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13426896

The point about "Agile the philosophy" being better than "Agile the practice" seems like a red herring to me, since so few get "Agile the philosophy" right. It's the same way I feel about things like HATEOAS: maybe it's good as a Platonic ideal, but if no one is reaching that ideal, then how useful is it really? There need to be suggestions that we can actually put into practice.

zpallin 10y ago
Exactly my problem with Agile. The philosophy is immense and hard to follow. Everyone sees it differently. The practice of it, thus, is always unique, and never consistent. We need something better.
- carsongross 10y ago
  Agile is never wrong: it is only the humans that have failed it. More consulting, of course, is required.
  - rubidium 10y ago
    It sounds like you're being sarcastic, but in case you're not. Process is built for people, not people for the process.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    That second line is the only thing that distinguishes Agile from communism ;)
- matwood 10y ago
  > The practice of it, thus, is always unique, and never consistent. And it should be unique for the team. The software process is not very transferable because people are not transferable (in addition to many other things that are also not transferable). Each team is different and the agile process should reflect that difference. Assuming there is not a lot of employee turnover, the team should become more consistent over time on a given project.
  - fusiongyro 10y ago
    I suggest then that what you have isn't a process. McDonalds has a process. The process makes it so that no matter which McDonalds you go to, you always get the same food. If your "process" works differently with different people, what you have is indistinguishable from not having a process.
    - feyn 10y ago
      Your point is difficult to refute. My thought is as follows: McDonalds is designed around the core idea that people are fungible and that mediocrity is optimal result (by "mediocrity" I mean no better, but no worse than the average hamburger). I do not believe that software development resources are fungible due to the high degree of creativity and independent decision making required to strike the best balance of quality and time-to-market, and often mediocre results can hurt companies during critical stages of growth. With that in mind, do we then say "If resources are not fungible and results cannot be mediocre then process cannot exist"? My answer is "no." A lack of resource fungibility does demand an individualized approach to training new resources on the process as it exists at a point in time, but provided resources do not change, the process itself should not change much outside of evidence-based optimization, i.e. "this ain't workin' so we better change somethin'" To me, process is about expectation management. Every other aspect of a process is in support of maintaining or exceeding expectations. I believe that if a process is so catered to individual whims that no expectations can be reliably set, then there isn't a process. Having said that, I do believe you can achieve a relatively consistent level of meeting and/or exceeding expectations with a process customized to the individual needs of the team members. Still, your point is very valid. Mine were only additional thoughts inspired by your astute observation.
- EdSharkey 10y ago
  To me, the real issue is that the managers got ahold of agile. Most managers just want waterfall, I'm convinced, which I suspect is where so much of the head scratching about Agile comes from. We developers have done an abysmal job developing, socializing, and formalizing our standards and practices. Needing to keep agile things loose because teams and industries and people and projects differ is one thing. But, we don't even try to establish unambiguous definitions for general topics like test-driven development, big visible charts, or sprints. Frankly, we need industry leadership and earned certifications for developer craftsmanship. Uncle Bob recently has shared some good food for thought in this area. Not only does he recommend the direction we professional devs need to head, but he also speculates as to what will happen if we don't (loss of freedom.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc
  - bluGill 10y ago
    Managers don't want waterfall. They want a process they can understand (waterfall is great here), that gives them a specific date they can point to as when everything is done and they can start making money. Waterfall says it gives you that. Of course we all know that waterfall doesn't actually give you what it claims, but it says when it doesn't you failed to manage one of the early phases correctly which means it tells them how to fix things: work harder there.
    - feyn 10y ago
      Ooo! I wrote another article talking about single date estimations: https://neilonsoftware.com/2016/07/13/a-far-too-brief-rough-outline-of-how-to-approach-single-date-estimation/ https://neilonsoftware.com/2016/07/13/a-far-too-brief-rough-... Yes, a specific date is absolutely what every manager at every level in the organization wants. As long a payroll is issued bi-weekly, and earnings reported quarterly, the desire for a fixed date will be a thing. The issue is, fixes dates when it comes to new software development is a fantasy. If you really, really wanted to talk to experts about hitting dates, I'm thinking that a well-funded initiative done in collaboration with 3 of the 4 branches of the U.S. military and the most respected innovator in aviation technology would be where you would go to find them. I would like to offer up the F-35 Joint Strike/Fighter program as exhibit 'A'. Turns out, despite all that funding and discipline (and threats of what will happen if you miss a deadline), they still can't hit their dates. If they can't, what hope do we have? That's not a rhetorical excuse - that's a real question. Is the answer Agile? Personally, I don't think it is. I think Hollywood has a far better model that anyone else does (pre-production -> production-> post-production). To get new ideas, I study how specific movies are made. One of my favorite case-studies is how they did "Max Max: Fury Road" (lots of storyboards - lots and lots and lots of storyboards). "But hollywood movies are always late/overbudget!!!", yes - which is my point. They know that and have specific adaptions that make this process work decade over decade - and generally a hell of a lot of cash in the process. At a minim, if Agile ain't workin' for everyone, we've got to try to get new ideas from somewhere. My personal choice is Hollywood.
feyn 10y ago
(I'm Neil, the author) I do agree with you. I about learned Agile first from my mentor (his formative years were in the 80s) who I did and do still deeply respect, but over time he and I disagreed over the nature of what Agile is and what it should result it as I gained more real-world experience. I honestly have no answers as to specific suggestions that work for everyone. I've even asked teams where I implemented Agile practices what they though of my interpretation and the response I get is "Dunno...works fine to me." The best advice I can offer has nothing to do specifically with Agile, but pertains to my experience customizing agile to an organization. I don't mean to plug my "book" (especially since I don't make money from it), but the best advice I can give anyone I put in here: https://neilonsoftware.com/books/personality-patterns-of-problematic-projects/ https://neilonsoftware.com/books/personality-patterns-of-pro... Flawed and incomplete I know, but the best I could think to do.

bluetwo 10y ago

Yes, Very much so. Could not agree with the author more.

feyn 10y ago
Careful - I know that guy (I am that guy). He hardly knows what he's talking about half the time, and for the other half he makes it up as he goes along. Seriously though, glad you liked it.

zpallin 10y ago

I agree with ian0's perspective, but I am compelled by Neil. I think we can learn a lot of patience about the state of software development from this article.

feyn 10y ago
I appreciate that - thank you.

agentultra 10y ago

"Process," is the answer to the question, "how do we get a team of talented engineers to design and implement software together?" The answer to what should that process be? I'd look to the SWEBOK[0] for an introduction to the state of the art. As for the question at stake here... let me use the words of someone much smarter than myself: > Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better. > Dijkstra (1984) On the nature of Computing Science (EWD896) If you don't appreciate the true difficulty of programming you're bound to create problems and spend most of the rest of your time debugging them later on. If your chief motivation is to sell a software product or service powered by software then it behooves you to create complexity. It seems more impressive when you can't explain why some component or feature doesn't work in a single sentence. You just want to control that complexity enough so that you can maintain the illusion of order. If you want to achieve simplicity you have to work at it. It's hard and doesn't come for free. You really have to think. There's no way around that. [0] https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/index;jsessionid=306e197849715725b82e977c6b54 https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/index;jsessionid=306e197...

feyn 10y ago
(I'm Neil, the author) I can't find a "like" button anywhere, so I'll just say "Like".
vorotato 10y ago
There's always the functional style of write something inanely simple and use massive words to describe it.

BerislavLopac 10y ago

I upvoted it at "Microservices are a concept, not an implementation."

feyn 10y ago
Thank you! I'm not sure when the industry confused that point, but I guess I can understand how.
twic 10y ago
I don't really understand what it means.
- feyn 10y ago
  This is a good place to start: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html The opening sentence sets the tone well for the article well: "'Microservices' - yet another new term on the crowded streets of software architecture." A colleague of mine once said that his work (he was a business strategist) was "slowly coming into focus." We're pretty far along today in our understanding of microservices, but at the time the article was written (early 2014) microservices were "slowly coming into focus". Reading what people where thinking when the industry was trying to define them should help in understanding what they are today.

nroach 10y ago

Why does this need its own thread? (Other than ego-stroking the OP) Seems like any response could be in the main thread or linked from there rather than splitting the discussion.

feyn 10y ago
(I'm the author) My bad. No excuses.
- jMyles 10y ago
  I upvoted it. I'm glad you posted it.
  - feyn 10y ago
    Thanks, I appreciate it. nroach does have a point. I made a judgement call, and can see both sides of if it was a good one.
jMyles 10y ago
Are we running out of threads? :-) Threads are cheap and this came to my attention more strongly this way than if it had just been a comment. Every piece of prose posted here is, in some way, a response to something. I'm not sure it's "ego-stroking," strictly speaking. What's wrong with giving the author recognition?
- feyn 10y ago
  (me = author) FWIW, I can totally understand how it could come across as ego stroking. In this particular case I wasn't trying to, but I have been guilty of it in my life. As for recognition, trust me - give it a week and no one will remember my article ever existed. I honestly just wanted to answer ian0's question thoughtfully, and made the best call I could think of.
etjossem 10y ago
Because this isn't just a response, but a piece of long-form content which stands well on its own. We generally use submissions for those. Comments are a great venue for short-form replies, but not for multi-page analyses of an interesting question.

sopooneo 10y ago

I agree with a lot of this, but I think there is a single correct answer for the best way to first learn about the "Agile Philosophy": http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/

feyn 10y ago
(I'm the author) Well...yes...and that's where (I hope) most people will start. What happens next, I've found, is that people's own confirmation bias' kick in, and they take the manifesto and make it describe (in their own mind) what they are already doing and/or want to do. The manifesto (to me) is how people who understood the nature and goals of Agile summarized their sprawling, complex, interconnected - and valid - thoughts. At the risk of being hyperbolic, I think of it like E = MC^2. Yes, that is a good summary of Einstein's theories, but if all you ever know of them is this summary you'll miss all the implications of what happens when you put it into practice. Probably a terrible example, but the best I could think of.

mindcrime 10y ago

(in regards to the original post that started this) I could rant for hours about how so many misuse the term "Agile" and the misunderstanding the idea(s) behind being agile. But I'm at a point where I almost don't care anymore. The use of "Agile" as though it describes a specific, prescriptive methodology is so ubiquitous that it's almost impossible to talk about the subject. Let me just say this... go read the Agile Manifesto before issuing any criticism of "Agile" and repeat this 10 times - "Agile is NOT a methodology". Scrum is a methodology. Crystal is a methodology. RUP is a methodology. XP is a methodology. OpenUP is a methodology. TSP is a methodology. One or more of those methodologies may be "agile", but "Agile" itself is NOT a methodology.

feyn 10y ago
(me = author) My bones ache from seeing Rational Unified Process mentioned, but of course you are correct. I would say I was "at the point where I almost (didn't) care" about 5 years ago. I then switched jobs and was made lead of a team I cared about, and decided I wasn't done with implementing Agile. There was a time, however, when I was downright apathetic. Companies had beaten me down too much, and I didn't have the energy to fight anymore, so I completely understand.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  Interestingly enough, I'm actually a fan of RUP, IF you instantiate it without requiring all the UML artifacts and what-not. One thing I like about RUP is that it emphasizes that you perform work in each area (requirements, design, implementation, etc.) in each iteration. To me, it emphasizes the "iterative" aspect of "iterative development" better than, say, (naive) Scrum. I also prefer the term "iteration" to "sprint" because the "sprint" analogy breaks down in that you can't actually SPRINT -> SPRINT -> SPRINT -> SPRINT forever and ever in reality. And to me, it just creates the wrong mindset. Admittedly it's a minor quibble though.
  - feyn 10y ago
    I learned RUP before Agile, and didn't hate it. I only learned if you like one thing you necessarily have to hate something else later in life. Aspects of RUP make it into my interpretation of agile. For example, I teach my dev teams UML (sketching as defined in Fowler's book) for whiteboarding and the rare BDUF, which RUP exposed me to. Speaking of BDUF, I've saved many a feature by resorting to BDUF when communication broken down. I didn't and don't want to start a flame war, but needless to say once in an interview I was asked if I was a "Scrum Master" (after having about 15 years of agile experience). When I stopped laughing, I said, "No, no I am not." I don't think they got the joke, and no - I didn't get the job. I don't think "iteration" vs "sprint" is a minor quibble. I've seen the "wrong mindset" you speak of, as people take "sprints" far too literally. It's not a sprint, it's a jog. A long, long jog. You'll be stopping for water and stretching along the way. Sprinting is a good way to pull a muscle and have all your devs quit on your one day, leaving you with a big-old case of backlog rhabdomyolysis. I took that analogy way too far.

ChicagoDave 10y ago

Cloud DevOps is complex, but we're just moving on-prem complexities and hardware complexities to the cloud, so it's a fair trade. Microservices, when done properly, are significantly less expensive than traditional service layers. Continuous Integration is one of the greatest improvements in software development.

feyn 10y ago
1) Yes, plus security concerns...that were really always there because clearly all those enterprise firewalls were not stopping anyone. Just ask Yahoo. 2) "When done properly" - therein lies the rub. 3) Absolutely agree, but I have seen teams screw it up time and time again. Never really figured out why that is.
- goalieca 10y ago
  I suppose #3 might fail because of the "frog in boiling water". If you throw a frog in boiling water it will freak out. But if you throw a frog in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, it will never notice. I actually like to submit completed modules when they are ready. I find constant pushing makes things a lot more complicated. edit: fix terrible spelling
  - feyn 10y ago
    Re: #3, perhaps so. I have seen many a good CI process go to hell over time. I could argue no one would have a CI process if in the beginning it wasn't making life easier. It would seem no CI process survives contact with the dev team. Re: Modules, generally I do as well, but what is a "module"? A function? A class? A library? A plugin? An extension? A listener? A handler? A subscriber? A publisher? A DAO? A DTO? An in-memory service? A networked service? A microservice? The philosophy that I subscribe to is continuous integration is not the same as "everyone check into the same branch anytime they want as often as they want" but also that it is not "everyone work in their own branch until time has run out and we have to force all of our stuff to work together." That middle ground can be very tough to find, but I find that if the CI system and the architecture are not designed to work together, devs will always thrash around between those two extremes.

deleted 10y ago

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keithnz 10y ago

I'm not sure this article is really saying too much at all. I started with extreme programming back in 99 (after following the proponents and all the heated discussions on the most brilliant OTUG email list) Many many times I have seen this kind of question, "Aren't we just making this too complicated?" and the response being "It's not complicated, if you misunderstand X Y or Z you are probably going wrong" My observation is, many things of the things we leverage in the software world are answers to problems. Some of those answers seem so good, and work brilliantly when combined with other answers we package a set of answers as a "process / methodology" and advocate it. But sometimes for some people the answers don't really match the problem, or need adapting to the problems at hand. Now, without good insight into the original problems, then YES it will be "too complicated". Any time you do things for problems you don't really have it is A phrase that was thrown around in the early days of XP was "Brain Engaged", to try and highlight that you don't blindly do things, you need to be aware why you are doing something and adapt as necessary. However! If someone says "hey this new new way of approaching design is awesome", and it piques your interest, You should blindly learn/try that something new and debug it till you get an understanding of why it was considered awesome. At that point you can brain engage it as needed. So back to the original question, yes, we do make things too complicated and we shouldn't do things that don't make sense. It may not make sense because we have the knowledge and experience to know it doesn't, or it doesn't make sense because we are too inexperienced. Both are valid reasons to stop and start asking what is going wrong? why isn't this working? In the world of "Lean" this is the idea of "Stop the line", sort things out, start moving forward again, even if slowly at first. All that doesn't mean you should keep things really basic without changing, it is very important to know how to adopt ideas for doing things better and that actually contribute to things we care about. Also important to try not to become a cynic, eg, "tried microservices, they suck, OO sucks, imperative sucks, VB sucks, NoSQl sucks". When we become cynical of something it becomes very hard to be brain engaged in regards to them. Also the opposite is true, becoming enamoured with something can limit our brain engagement also like "Functional program all the things!, unit test all the things!, scale all the things! deep learn all the things! distribute all the things! Reactive all the things! things! the all Forth"

feyn 10y ago
"I'm not sure this article is really saying too much at all" I believe to be accurate, and I'm the author. I wasn't so much as making a statement or a point as addressing the questions in the best best way I knew how. If "The Dude" wrote a response to Ian0's original question, I would think it would have a similar sentiment to mine, though far more concise: "Yeah man...but, you know - no man."

gandutraveler 10y ago

OP vs this response is great example of gaps in "actual usage" vs concepts