6 ms·

Nerds screw up everything we touch. I don't think we mean to. Whatever the system, we make it more complicated, er featureful. Then we add an abstraction layer.

Nerds screw up everything we touch. I don't think we mean to. Whatever the system, we make it more complicated, er featureful. Then we add an abstraction layer. Then we make that layer more complicated. Repeat and rinse. Some abstraction layers help more than they hurt, but the ratio is about 1-in-10 or so. For any given project, there are probably a dozen cool-sounding frameworks or layers, one of which is absolutely needed. The rest are there because somebody wants to be promised that even crappy programmers can use this to make cool stuff happens. The sales pitch is clear: don't become a better programmer, get a better toolkit. I have been quite fortunate to have come into computers before this cloud of marketing madness overtook us. I got to watch the layers roll out one-by-one. Honestly I have no idea how I would learn programming if I had to do it again today. It's just too much of a byzantine mess. Hell if I would start with the top layers, though. I'd rather know how to write simple code in BASIC than have a grasp of setting up a CRUD website using WhizBang 4.7 When you learn programming, well you should be learning how to program. Not how to breeze through stuff. Breezing through stuff is great when you already know what's going on -- but by the time you already know what's going on, it's unlikely you'll need the layer or framework. (Sadly, the most likely scenario is that you've invented yet another framework and are busy evangelizing it to others.) This guy's story strikes me as poignant and indicative of where the industry is. They don't care if you can solve people's problems. They care if you're one of the cool kids. It's nerd signaling.

d3ckard 9y ago
I'd put it differently. Software development severely lacks any objective metrics of performance and quality. We just haven't invented any(at least any practical enough to become mainstream). As a result, we quite often misjudge our(and others') skill and make bad decisions. It's the goal of software to provide more and more features. The problem is, we usually achieve those features by abusing abstractions we are using. Once the problem becomes apparent, somebody writes a library, which allows us to write a couple of times more crappy code before everything collapses. Rinse and repeat. Since we are unable on scale to choose right abstractions when necessary, we quite often get ourselves in situations, when it's actually preferable to rewrite everything using lessons learnt. Rewriting comes with its own set of new problems and cycle is complete. As a result, we are fundamentally unable to reuse already written code on scale, crumbling development and putting the whole industry in constant early-stage.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  >>It's the goal of software to provide more and more features. That's the goal. The key question is: are we writing features that users find valuable or are we writing features that developers find valuable? They're two different things. What's happened is that the community has become incestuous. Instead of focusing on value to the user we're focusing on selling frameworks to one another. >>Software development severely lacks any objective metrics of performance and quality. Agreed here as well. But this is related to my first point. Nobody wants to focus on the users. It's far too easy to focus on the technology (or other developers). You write a feature for a user, you can instrument it and see whether users use it or not. You write a feature for a developer, even if nobody uses it you can argue that somewhere, somehow, that feature is going to be critical. It's an abstract value argument -- which is intractable. >>As a result, we are fundamentally unable to reuse already written code on scale, crumbling development and putting the whole industry in constant early-stage. It's a sad state of affairs. I suggest that your conclusion continues the broken thinking I'm describing above. We shouldn't be striving for reusable code at scale. We should be striving for people who have strong basic programming skills and are experts in some business domain. Then we would shoot for the minimum amount of technological abstraction necessary for these programmers to solve problems in that particular domain. Because that's really what the whole point is, not creating large codebases that last twenty years, creating tiny bits of code almost instantly that solve business problems for twenty years. We've got our head stuck in the wrong bucket.
  - mercer 9y ago
    > That's the goal. The key question is: are we writing features that users find valuable or are we writing features that developers find valuable? They're two different things. What's happened is that the community has become incestuous. Instead of focusing on value to the user we're focusing on selling frameworks to one another. I think a deeper problem is that we're not really doing such a great job writing features for developers either. I'm amazed at how much of what I do is still done in the terminal or a bare-bones REPL, not so different from how they worked a few decades ago, when there's so much that could actually improve my day-to-day in small but very noticeable ways. For example, I make almost constant use of the autocomplete feature when I work with the BEAM REPL (Elixir). I was amazed to find out that this was a relatively new feature. I can't count how many keystrokes it saves me throughout the day. Of course, I still can't use VIM-style keybindings, and I'm being forced to write my REPL-code line by line instead of a Chrome Devtools style snippets. But, as you say, I do have tons of frameworks to choose from that all do mostly the same thing, and yet none of them do the relatively common thing that I need, so each of them requires me to read documentation and figure out how to configure it 'just-so'...
jakelazaroff 9y ago
Being able to solve people's problems doesn't mean you need to be able to program. What is a "real programmer", anyway? Is it knowing how a CPU works? Managing memory? If you rely on the garbage collector, do you really know what you're doing? If you write a Rails app without fully understanding HTTP, are you just plumbing? Does it matter? The reason we build tools and abstractions is to allow us to accomplish higher-level tasks without worrying about lower-level ones. Does it help if you understand lower level ones? Sure. But for millions of apps and websites that aren't Facebook or Hacker News or Firefox, the only problems are high level.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  I think that it matters if you can dig into anything. Given reasonable timespan being able to learn x64 machine code, debug and fix buggy driver if necessary, for example. If you're program has GC issues, being able to read papers, read GC source code if necessary and find right set of parameters or change some lines of code. If your Rails app has vulnerability because of underlying HTTP issues, being able to learn more about those HTTP issues, read RFC if necessary, read Ruby http code if necessary and provide required fix. If your manager heard about Meltdown issue and wonders whether our services are vulnerable, real programmer should be able to read papers, understand vulnerability and whether it's important (to shut down services, for example) or not. Abstractions are leaky. I've yet to encounter one which doesn't leak. Though if you're working in a team, it's not necessary for everyone to be real programmer. One or two is enough. Those tasks which require real programming are rare, most of tasks are mundane.
  - mercer 9y ago
    I'd say the world 'real' muddles things up and injects too much value judgment, and with little purpose I can see other than making oneself feel special (or inferior). I'd much prefer 'highly skilled' or 'advanced', if at all necessary.
  - jakelazaroff 9y ago
    Sure, I'll concede all of those points! But I think they fundamentally change the question, because now you're presenting a different set of problems to solve. Understanding one level of abstraction doesn't mean that you understand the levels above or below it. It's perfectly possible (likely, even!) that a team will have someone who can build a good Rails app and someone else who can make sure the HTTP code and infrastructure is secure, yet those people won't have many skills that overlap. Yes, there are definitely good programmers and bad programmers. IMO, that has to do with how effectively you can solve problems you care about, not (as the comment to which I was replying suggests) the level of abstraction you're comfortable with.
nradov 9y ago
It's rather disappointing how the industry hasn't made any progress on CRUD application development productivity in the past 20+ years. Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 allowed low-skilled developers to build working client/server CRUD applications far faster than any modern web development framework. Of course it's easier to distribute web applications than thick client Windows applications, but other than that we haven't gained anything.
- meredydd 9y ago
  We're trying to move this forward at https://anvil.works https://anvil.works - the usability of Visual Basic, with the ease of distribution of the web. Biased I may be, but I'd call that progress :)

d3ckard 9y ago

I'd put it differently. Software development severely lacks any objective metrics of performance and quality. We just haven't invented any(at least any practical enough to become mainstream). As a result, we quite often misjudge our(and others') skill and make bad decisions. It's the goal of software to provide more and more features. The problem is, we usually achieve those features by abusing abstractions we are using. Once the problem becomes apparent, somebody writes a library, which allows us to write a couple of times more crappy code before everything collapses. Rinse and repeat. Since we are unable on scale to choose right abstractions when necessary, we quite often get ourselves in situations, when it's actually preferable to rewrite everything using lessons learnt. Rewriting comes with its own set of new problems and cycle is complete. As a result, we are fundamentally unable to reuse already written code on scale, crumbling development and putting the whole industry in constant early-stage.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago
>>It's the goal of software to provide more and more features. That's the goal. The key question is: are we writing features that users find valuable or are we writing features that developers find valuable? They're two different things. What's happened is that the community has become incestuous. Instead of focusing on value to the user we're focusing on selling frameworks to one another. >>Software development severely lacks any objective metrics of performance and quality. Agreed here as well. But this is related to my first point. Nobody wants to focus on the users. It's far too easy to focus on the technology (or other developers). You write a feature for a user, you can instrument it and see whether users use it or not. You write a feature for a developer, even if nobody uses it you can argue that somewhere, somehow, that feature is going to be critical. It's an abstract value argument -- which is intractable. >>As a result, we are fundamentally unable to reuse already written code on scale, crumbling development and putting the whole industry in constant early-stage. It's a sad state of affairs. I suggest that your conclusion continues the broken thinking I'm describing above. We shouldn't be striving for reusable code at scale. We should be striving for people who have strong basic programming skills and are experts in some business domain. Then we would shoot for the minimum amount of technological abstraction necessary for these programmers to solve problems in that particular domain. Because that's really what the whole point is, not creating large codebases that last twenty years, creating tiny bits of code almost instantly that solve business problems for twenty years. We've got our head stuck in the wrong bucket.
- mercer 9y ago
  > That's the goal. The key question is: are we writing features that users find valuable or are we writing features that developers find valuable? They're two different things. What's happened is that the community has become incestuous. Instead of focusing on value to the user we're focusing on selling frameworks to one another. I think a deeper problem is that we're not really doing such a great job writing features for developers either. I'm amazed at how much of what I do is still done in the terminal or a bare-bones REPL, not so different from how they worked a few decades ago, when there's so much that could actually improve my day-to-day in small but very noticeable ways. For example, I make almost constant use of the autocomplete feature when I work with the BEAM REPL (Elixir). I was amazed to find out that this was a relatively new feature. I can't count how many keystrokes it saves me throughout the day. Of course, I still can't use VIM-style keybindings, and I'm being forced to write my REPL-code line by line instead of a Chrome Devtools style snippets. But, as you say, I do have tons of frameworks to choose from that all do mostly the same thing, and yet none of them do the relatively common thing that I need, so each of them requires me to read documentation and figure out how to configure it 'just-so'...

jakelazaroff 9y ago

Being able to solve people's problems doesn't mean you need to be able to program. What is a "real programmer", anyway? Is it knowing how a CPU works? Managing memory? If you rely on the garbage collector, do you really know what you're doing? If you write a Rails app without fully understanding HTTP, are you just plumbing? Does it matter? The reason we build tools and abstractions is to allow us to accomplish higher-level tasks without worrying about lower-level ones. Does it help if you understand lower level ones? Sure. But for millions of apps and websites that aren't Facebook or Hacker News or Firefox, the only problems are high level.

vbezhenar 9y ago
I think that it matters if you can dig into anything. Given reasonable timespan being able to learn x64 machine code, debug and fix buggy driver if necessary, for example. If you're program has GC issues, being able to read papers, read GC source code if necessary and find right set of parameters or change some lines of code. If your Rails app has vulnerability because of underlying HTTP issues, being able to learn more about those HTTP issues, read RFC if necessary, read Ruby http code if necessary and provide required fix. If your manager heard about Meltdown issue and wonders whether our services are vulnerable, real programmer should be able to read papers, understand vulnerability and whether it's important (to shut down services, for example) or not. Abstractions are leaky. I've yet to encounter one which doesn't leak. Though if you're working in a team, it's not necessary for everyone to be real programmer. One or two is enough. Those tasks which require real programming are rare, most of tasks are mundane.
- mercer 9y ago
  I'd say the world 'real' muddles things up and injects too much value judgment, and with little purpose I can see other than making oneself feel special (or inferior). I'd much prefer 'highly skilled' or 'advanced', if at all necessary.
- jakelazaroff 9y ago
  Sure, I'll concede all of those points! But I think they fundamentally change the question, because now you're presenting a different set of problems to solve. Understanding one level of abstraction doesn't mean that you understand the levels above or below it. It's perfectly possible (likely, even!) that a team will have someone who can build a good Rails app and someone else who can make sure the HTTP code and infrastructure is secure, yet those people won't have many skills that overlap. Yes, there are definitely good programmers and bad programmers. IMO, that has to do with how effectively you can solve problems you care about, not (as the comment to which I was replying suggests) the level of abstraction you're comfortable with.

nradov 9y ago

It's rather disappointing how the industry hasn't made any progress on CRUD application development productivity in the past 20+ years. Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 allowed low-skilled developers to build working client/server CRUD applications far faster than any modern web development framework. Of course it's easier to distribute web applications than thick client Windows applications, but other than that we haven't gained anything.

meredydd 9y ago
We're trying to move this forward at https://anvil.works https://anvil.works - the usability of Visual Basic, with the ease of distribution of the web. Biased I may be, but I'd call that progress :)