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I think the idea is not to use experimental technology at work. Go ahead and use a new sexy programming language or library that may be entirely defunct in 2 ye

I think the idea is not to use experimental technology at work. Go ahead and use a new sexy programming language or library that may be entirely defunct in 2 years on your own time, but don't saddle a company with that and think you're good at your job.

eropple 8y ago
The dude is handwringing about NoSQL in 2018. Something like Cassandra is no longer "experimental technology." It is a well-understood technology with well-understood requirements (and they are high, that's why you do a business analysis to make sure they make sense) that happens to be non-relational. He is handwringing about single-page applications. SPAs have been kicking around for, what, a decade? Let's be real--in this article the single-page application complaint is a proxy for "I don't like JavaScript" and he's entitled to that opinion but it is certainly not "experimental"; JavaScript is not going anywhere, it is well-understood both in browser and on the server, and the libraries and ecosystem are not going anywhere either--if Facebook died tomorrow there would still be React jobs in 2023. There are parts of current software development that really, really suck. The author does not capture them; this is "new things are scary" complaining and very little more.
- sametmax 8y ago
  > SPAs have been kicking around for, what, a decade? Only with big players: facebook, gmail, etc. Small crew SPA usually suck big time precisely because there is not django/ror/etc equivalent for SPA. So people write it by hand. And they don't all have the talent pool and money the GAFAs have.
  - eropple 8y ago
    Small crew web apps usually suck, too. I have yet to see React (not to exclude Vue etc., React is what I use) make a nontrivial one worse than it otherwise would be, if only because it forces some semblance of separation of concerns upon the developer. (And, speaking personally, my now-standard stack of TypeScript/Express/TypeORM/tsoa provides a level of architectural enforcement I've only really gotten previously on the JVM, but with significantly less mucking around with my runtime.)
    - sametmax 8y ago
      It would be pretty hard to mess up a hackernews clone. A HN clone SPA though... First, let's see if they can get code splitting right to not make it loads 3mo/page. Then if they can choose a stack that doesn't kill navigation. Also, let's see how long it takes both team to come up with the same result. My money is on the static stack. Just the registration without a good framework is plenty of fun. Not that you can't make a SPA with an old school framework. But for some reason, SPA lovers will often go full nodejs as well, which is basically 1000 of libs you have to hand picks and fuse together. I work on more and more SPA every day. It's always the same deal: the cost is higher, and it needs smarter devs. Bottom line: do one when it has a good added value for your users.
- SomeCallMeTim 8y ago
  It's actually worse than you're saying. NoSQL databases have been around since the 60s [1], and the term was created in 1998. Two decades ago. Is the author of this manifesto saying that they'll only work with tech from the 50s? Or is the 80s good enough? The 90s clearly isn't. In fact, Ajax has _also_ been around for two decades; 1998 was a big year for the web, apparently. The Outlook Web App (a major milestone in SPAs) was created in 2000, 18 years ago. This "manifesto" is nothing more than "I choose to bury my head in the sand and use outdated tech and ignore the state of the art!" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL
  - eropple 8y ago
    I'm aware on both counts--I was more looking at it from the standpoint of common acceptance. Cassandra was first released in 2008 and became pretty manageable not too long after that. OWA was 1998 and GMail was 2004, but the tools were pretty grungy and hard to get into for awhile. I'd say that they didn't become really legitimately decent until Backbone (late 2010), but there were workable ones for a couple years before that.
    - SomeCallMeTim 8y ago
      Just saying that both SPAs and NoSQL have had _more_ than enough time to mature. It's not like they both were invented a decade ago; they were a decade _mature_ a decade ago.
epicide 8y ago
They seem to have left it intentionally pretty vague in order for people to fill in these sorts of gaps. If they meant "don't use experimental technology at work" then they should say that. If they are trying to imply it by giving examples of technologies that are hardly new or experimental, then that's even more cause for being explicit.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  They say they're sick of "hyped and volatile technologies" which I think is the same thing as experimental technologies. Perhaps they could have picked more black-and-white examples like blockchain, so many dead javascript libraries, so many rebuilds of existing technologies. But I happen to agree with their examples largely.
phillipcarter 8y ago
Full disclosure: I work on a language that is almost by definition niche, and benefit from its adoption. I think workplaces really, really should be using newer/"sexier" programming languages and libraries, but not as a blanket approach. People should be allowed to experiment and try new things, especially for projects or parts of projects that are new and exciting. This shouldn't be in lieu of existing and well-known technology.

eropple 8y ago

The dude is handwringing about NoSQL in 2018. Something like Cassandra is no longer "experimental technology." It is a well-understood technology with well-understood requirements (and they are high, that's why you do a business analysis to make sure they make sense) that happens to be non-relational. He is handwringing about single-page applications. SPAs have been kicking around for, what, a decade? Let's be real--in this article the single-page application complaint is a proxy for "I don't like JavaScript" and he's entitled to that opinion but it is certainly not "experimental"; JavaScript is not going anywhere, it is well-understood both in browser and on the server, and the libraries and ecosystem are not going anywhere either--if Facebook died tomorrow there would still be React jobs in 2023. There are parts of current software development that really, really suck. The author does not capture them; this is "new things are scary" complaining and very little more.

sametmax 8y ago
> SPAs have been kicking around for, what, a decade? Only with big players: facebook, gmail, etc. Small crew SPA usually suck big time precisely because there is not django/ror/etc equivalent for SPA. So people write it by hand. And they don't all have the talent pool and money the GAFAs have.
- eropple 8y ago
  Small crew web apps usually suck, too. I have yet to see React (not to exclude Vue etc., React is what I use) make a nontrivial one worse than it otherwise would be, if only because it forces some semblance of separation of concerns upon the developer. (And, speaking personally, my now-standard stack of TypeScript/Express/TypeORM/tsoa provides a level of architectural enforcement I've only really gotten previously on the JVM, but with significantly less mucking around with my runtime.)
  - sametmax 8y ago
    It would be pretty hard to mess up a hackernews clone. A HN clone SPA though... First, let's see if they can get code splitting right to not make it loads 3mo/page. Then if they can choose a stack that doesn't kill navigation. Also, let's see how long it takes both team to come up with the same result. My money is on the static stack. Just the registration without a good framework is plenty of fun. Not that you can't make a SPA with an old school framework. But for some reason, SPA lovers will often go full nodejs as well, which is basically 1000 of libs you have to hand picks and fuse together. I work on more and more SPA every day. It's always the same deal: the cost is higher, and it needs smarter devs. Bottom line: do one when it has a good added value for your users.
SomeCallMeTim 8y ago
It's actually worse than you're saying. NoSQL databases have been around since the 60s [1], and the term was created in 1998. Two decades ago. Is the author of this manifesto saying that they'll only work with tech from the 50s? Or is the 80s good enough? The 90s clearly isn't. In fact, Ajax has _also_ been around for two decades; 1998 was a big year for the web, apparently. The Outlook Web App (a major milestone in SPAs) was created in 2000, 18 years ago. This "manifesto" is nothing more than "I choose to bury my head in the sand and use outdated tech and ignore the state of the art!" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL
- eropple 8y ago
  I'm aware on both counts--I was more looking at it from the standpoint of common acceptance. Cassandra was first released in 2008 and became pretty manageable not too long after that. OWA was 1998 and GMail was 2004, but the tools were pretty grungy and hard to get into for awhile. I'd say that they didn't become really legitimately decent until Backbone (late 2010), but there were workable ones for a couple years before that.
  - SomeCallMeTim 8y ago
    Just saying that both SPAs and NoSQL have had _more_ than enough time to mature. It's not like they both were invented a decade ago; they were a decade _mature_ a decade ago.

epicide 8y ago

They seem to have left it intentionally pretty vague in order for people to fill in these sorts of gaps. If they meant "don't use experimental technology at work" then they should say that. If they are trying to imply it by giving examples of technologies that are hardly new or experimental, then that's even more cause for being explicit.

alexandercrohde 8y ago
They say they're sick of "hyped and volatile technologies" which I think is the same thing as experimental technologies. Perhaps they could have picked more black-and-white examples like blockchain, so many dead javascript libraries, so many rebuilds of existing technologies. But I happen to agree with their examples largely.

phillipcarter 8y ago

Full disclosure: I work on a language that is almost by definition niche, and benefit from its adoption. I think workplaces really, really should be using newer/"sexier" programming languages and libraries, but not as a blanket approach. People should be allowed to experiment and try new things, especially for projects or parts of projects that are new and exciting. This shouldn't be in lieu of existing and well-known technology.