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You know, I really appreciate this response and perspective; because it makes total sense. It's human to want to stick to what you know and only natural to be h

You know, I really appreciate this response and perspective; because it makes total sense. It's human to want to stick to what you know and only natural to be hesitant of the unknown, especially when you have the tenure to have seen it all over the course of a career. That experience is valuable and it's why in many cases I do lean upon this senior guy for input on specific topics I know he is the best resource for. That said, in this specific context of tech (or at least in my wheelhouse of Ops), this is surmounted by creating and fostering a culture where it's okay to experiment and fail. Where we've been handicapped in this regard is specifically not doing that, and the particular individual who makes this difficult having the mentality that any new approach spells doom and actively working against initiatives to put us in a better posture of experimentation in environments that don't sacrifice stability and reliability of our stack (hence the sarcastic comment about giving up my first born child for server immutability--I don't even have kids, haha). But that said, I think you're absolutely right. I'm not quite greybeard yet-mostly because I yank out every grey hair I see trying to establish residency on my chin, but nonetheless your point is accurate, well taken and definitely that has immense merit.

mattmanser 9y ago
And if you allow experiment and fail, you end up with 20 different frameworks in your app. And that means a huge cost of inconsistency. Every time you need to make a little tweak you have to learn how that part of the app works. When you just want to get shit done, being able to go into any part of the app and knowing it's built exactly the same way as every other part means you don't have to spend any time learning insert X framework, you spend time doing, implementing business rules and fixing bugs. A lot of programmers want to spend time playing with tech, not doing because playing with tech is more fun then doing the job. Worst still, juniors (including me back then) are woefully unaware of just how clueless about programming they actually are, as alluded to by the parent, and that means they have massively over-inflated opinion of their views. They also tend to be wildly optimistic about how long a change will take and totally disregard the human cost (the cost of re-training and loss of productivity) of changing a piece of tech.

mattmanser 9y ago

And if you allow experiment and fail, you end up with 20 different frameworks in your app. And that means a huge cost of inconsistency. Every time you need to make a little tweak you have to learn how that part of the app works. When you just want to get shit done, being able to go into any part of the app and knowing it's built exactly the same way as every other part means you don't have to spend any time learning insert X framework, you spend time doing, implementing business rules and fixing bugs. A lot of programmers want to spend time playing with tech, not doing because playing with tech is more fun then doing the job. Worst still, juniors (including me back then) are woefully unaware of just how clueless about programming they actually are, as alluded to by the parent, and that means they have massively over-inflated opinion of their views. They also tend to be wildly optimistic about how long a change will take and totally disregard the human cost (the cost of re-training and loss of productivity) of changing a piece of tech.