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>We seem to be losing our playfulness. I think that's a good thing. The early hackers could get away with being playful because their work was, in the grand sc

>We seem to be losing our playfulness. I think that's a good thing. The early hackers could get away with being playful because their work was, in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important. No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves. However, as more and more things have become computerized, it's important that we, as a profession, recognize the increasing responsibility that has been placed upon our shoulders. It is time to put away childish things, and focus on what really matters: building fast, reliable, secure software. I'm not opposed to antirez coming up with a new playful hack to celebrate each edition of Redis. But why does it have to be part of the Redis codebase? Why does it have to be invocable with a Redis command?

malvosenior 8y ago
> No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves. I think you have this very wrong. Until personal computers went mainstream, all programming was for business (or the military, or research). It's great that a ton of businesses are benefiting for free from antirez's work (including my own) but we owe him and all the other creators/maintainers of the OSS software we use a debt of gratitude. If antirez wants whimsy in the code base, more power to him.
- bigiain 8y ago
  I also think quanticle is wrong, but for quite different reasons. I didn't start programming as "a profession", and have zero desire to "put away childish things". Sure, I get paid (and paid well) to do some of this stuff, and accept "the increasing responsibility" while doing it at work on someone else's dime. But... I do it for a living because I enjoy doing it for fun - and as a result of that I'm good at it. I started programming in high school because I was intensely curious about how computers worked, and how other people made them do "interesting things", and how I could do similar or radically different "interesting things" myself. I still (when I'm not too burned out solving work's problems, which are "in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important") retain that curiosity and the hubris to think "I could do that. In fact, it'd be _more_ hilarious if they'd done it differently... _I_ could do it better!" Businesses benefiting from my work, or payroll systems/hospitals/oil-refineries using any of my creativity or problem-solving is - for me - purely a side effect of the whimsy and childishness that makes me interested in and good at what I do. I realise this is a very personal point of view - and I recognise there are people out there (including some of my co workers) who pursued CompSci or other IT related degrees based purely on potential career earnings, and I don't for a minute look down on them or their motivations. But I recognise around me people - like antirez - that obviously share some of my joy and delight in the ability to "just make computers do interesting shit for the hell of it". (To be honest, I'm in one of my "burnt out by work" patches right now, and this piece by antirez has inspired me to get back to my notebook and pinboard bookmarks, to do something hardware/software related which is completely useless, apart from making me and perhaps a few friends smile...)
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I totally agree. I code because it's fun for me and I find it inherently interesting (and yes, whimsical). That I can make a good living doing what I love is great. That businesses can derive value from my code doesn't really concern me either way. It does irk me to see people be so demanding with antirez. They are in many cases benefiting financially from Redis, all for free. It's ridiculous to get on a high horse and start shaming/bullying someone who created something that you benefit from, even if your benefit wasn't the author's intention but merely a byproduct of them making something awesome.
    - bigiain 8y ago
      Heh. Staunch agreement in this thread - respectful disagreement in that other one. We should go for a beer or coffee...
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        That is funny :) Your profile is very interesting and I'd take you up on your offer. Sadly though, because I speak my mind politically with this account (often questioning the left-wing status quo) I must stay anonymous otherwise I risk real career damage. Back on topic, it's great to see people who can be on opposite sides of the major areas of debate in our industry have a common underlying love of tech that's bigger than business (and politics).
  - quanticle 8y ago
    I'm not saying you can't have fun. But I do think that it's important to recognize that your fun can impose costs on others. Like I said in my original comment, I don't mind in the slightest that antirez is experimenting with visualizing complexity theory on the command line. What I object to is that he's shipping this as part of redis. Why? It just seems like it adds maintenance burden for no purpose.
    - bigiain 8y ago
      What _I'm_ saying is that you're free to write your own high performance in memory data store without any bothersome whimsy-related maintenance burden. Antirez has already written his one, in which he's chosen to include whimsy. Your objections to him doing that seem... I dunno. Pointless? None of your business? Overly entitled? Not quite sure exactly, but since you didn't pay him to write it for you, objections from you on what he should or shouldn't include in the thing he's allowing you to use for free seem to be at the very least impolite... While you're happy to burden Antirez with "increasing responsibility" placed on his shoulders in the name of "the profession", you seem to be fairly quiet on one of the fundamental aspects of "profession", which has always implied "getting paid for it". Being part of a profession fundamentally implies "imposing cost on others" for your work. How much money have you offered (or would you be prepared to offer) to Antirez or Redis Labs for a version of redis _without_ whimsy? I'm sure at least Redis Labs have someone in their sales team who'd be happy to negotiate an appropriately professionally priced and supported license for that. The very name of this command seems to be a perfectly reasonable response to your complaint that this piece of free-as-in-beer as well as free-as-in-freedom software is somehow "imposing costs on you" - LOLWUT?
- quanticle 8y ago
  >I think you have this very wrong. Until personal computers went mainstream, all programming was for business (or the military, or research). You're misunderstanding my point. I said all of their code. I was referring to the code written by the early "hackers", in university labs. Of course there was computer code being run to compute payrolls and run industrial systems. But you'll notice that that code was very rigorously written, and an Easter egg of this sort would not have been accepted into those codebases.
sgentle 8y ago
Be careful not to confuse solemn and serious. If the Apollo engineers could have fun shooting a tin can at the moon and the Manhattan Project engineers could have fun creating humanity's most terrible weapon, you can have fun making a VC-backed webapp or back-office database. Don't let anyone convince you engineers having fun is the reason for all the garbage software. That's pure stockholm syndrome. The reason for garbage software is that developers aren't treated like real engineers, and don't act like real engineers. They're children in a room full of adults making Important Business Decisions That They Just Need To Accept. So what if those decisions are bad engineering? You're not a real engineer anyway so listen to the grownups. The worst part is they do it to themselves. In the biggest sellers market in history, developers don't put their feet down about bad decisions because b-b-but I might get fired! They passively watch, nod sagely when it all goes to shit and say "mmm, I knew that was going to happen" like ignoring the responsibility that comes with professional training is something to be proud of. You think sales people make more money because they studied harder? It's because they know their value. You think lawyers get taken more seriously because they dress better? It's because they are personally and professionally liable for everything they say - or don't say - to a client. You think doctors have more autonomy because they never have any fun? It's because every doctor knows that no extenuating circumstances, no "but management said", no piece of paper can ever clean the blood from their hands. Believing that the problem is easter eggs is buying into the same mindset that brought us here in the first place. Those naughty developers again! Gosh, when will they start wearing ties to work, sit patiently in meetings while we talk at them, and then sign off on half-finished garbage code? Don't they know we have a business to run! But the Challenger didn't explode because of Silly Shirt Friday. It exploded because management didn't respect their engineers. When the first fatal microservice is written, it won't be because developers had fun. It'll be because they don't respect themselves.
- quanticle 8y ago
  >But the Challenger didn't explode because of Silly Shirt Friday. It exploded because management didn't respect their engineers. That's a myth. I encourage you to read Challenger Launch Decision, by Diane Vaughan. Challenger didn't explode because management disrespected their engineers. Challenger exploded because the engineers themselves normalized deviance. They would launch, observe anomalous results, note that the system hadn't failed, and then expand the envelope of normality to include the anomalous results. At no point did the team working on the SRBs say, "No, we should stop the Shuttle program and redesign the booster," not even to other engineers. Repeatedly, in interviews, engineers expressed surprise and shock at the failure, because they thought that the problem of O-ring blow-by was a minor problem that could be fixed with tweaks. Indeed, on many an occasion, they thought that they had fixed it, only for the issue to recur in the future. It's easy and comforting for us engineers to think that Challenger was due to myopia on the behalf of NASA management. But it's wrong. Challenger was the result of cascade failure of rationality all throughout the NASA organization, and the engineers are as culpable as the managers.

malvosenior 8y ago

> No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves. I think you have this very wrong. Until personal computers went mainstream, all programming was for business (or the military, or research). It's great that a ton of businesses are benefiting for free from antirez's work (including my own) but we owe him and all the other creators/maintainers of the OSS software we use a debt of gratitude. If antirez wants whimsy in the code base, more power to him.

bigiain 8y ago
I also think quanticle is wrong, but for quite different reasons. I didn't start programming as "a profession", and have zero desire to "put away childish things". Sure, I get paid (and paid well) to do some of this stuff, and accept "the increasing responsibility" while doing it at work on someone else's dime. But... I do it for a living because I enjoy doing it for fun - and as a result of that I'm good at it. I started programming in high school because I was intensely curious about how computers worked, and how other people made them do "interesting things", and how I could do similar or radically different "interesting things" myself. I still (when I'm not too burned out solving work's problems, which are "in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important") retain that curiosity and the hubris to think "I could do that. In fact, it'd be _more_ hilarious if they'd done it differently... _I_ could do it better!" Businesses benefiting from my work, or payroll systems/hospitals/oil-refineries using any of my creativity or problem-solving is - for me - purely a side effect of the whimsy and childishness that makes me interested in and good at what I do. I realise this is a very personal point of view - and I recognise there are people out there (including some of my co workers) who pursued CompSci or other IT related degrees based purely on potential career earnings, and I don't for a minute look down on them or their motivations. But I recognise around me people - like antirez - that obviously share some of my joy and delight in the ability to "just make computers do interesting shit for the hell of it". (To be honest, I'm in one of my "burnt out by work" patches right now, and this piece by antirez has inspired me to get back to my notebook and pinboard bookmarks, to do something hardware/software related which is completely useless, apart from making me and perhaps a few friends smile...)
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I totally agree. I code because it's fun for me and I find it inherently interesting (and yes, whimsical). That I can make a good living doing what I love is great. That businesses can derive value from my code doesn't really concern me either way. It does irk me to see people be so demanding with antirez. They are in many cases benefiting financially from Redis, all for free. It's ridiculous to get on a high horse and start shaming/bullying someone who created something that you benefit from, even if your benefit wasn't the author's intention but merely a byproduct of them making something awesome.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    Heh. Staunch agreement in this thread - respectful disagreement in that other one. We should go for a beer or coffee...
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      That is funny :) Your profile is very interesting and I'd take you up on your offer. Sadly though, because I speak my mind politically with this account (often questioning the left-wing status quo) I must stay anonymous otherwise I risk real career damage. Back on topic, it's great to see people who can be on opposite sides of the major areas of debate in our industry have a common underlying love of tech that's bigger than business (and politics).
- quanticle 8y ago
  I'm not saying you can't have fun. But I do think that it's important to recognize that your fun can impose costs on others. Like I said in my original comment, I don't mind in the slightest that antirez is experimenting with visualizing complexity theory on the command line. What I object to is that he's shipping this as part of redis. Why? It just seems like it adds maintenance burden for no purpose.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    What _I'm_ saying is that you're free to write your own high performance in memory data store without any bothersome whimsy-related maintenance burden. Antirez has already written his one, in which he's chosen to include whimsy. Your objections to him doing that seem... I dunno. Pointless? None of your business? Overly entitled? Not quite sure exactly, but since you didn't pay him to write it for you, objections from you on what he should or shouldn't include in the thing he's allowing you to use for free seem to be at the very least impolite... While you're happy to burden Antirez with "increasing responsibility" placed on his shoulders in the name of "the profession", you seem to be fairly quiet on one of the fundamental aspects of "profession", which has always implied "getting paid for it". Being part of a profession fundamentally implies "imposing cost on others" for your work. How much money have you offered (or would you be prepared to offer) to Antirez or Redis Labs for a version of redis _without_ whimsy? I'm sure at least Redis Labs have someone in their sales team who'd be happy to negotiate an appropriately professionally priced and supported license for that. The very name of this command seems to be a perfectly reasonable response to your complaint that this piece of free-as-in-beer as well as free-as-in-freedom software is somehow "imposing costs on you" - LOLWUT?
quanticle 8y ago
>I think you have this very wrong. Until personal computers went mainstream, all programming was for business (or the military, or research). You're misunderstanding my point. I said all of their code. I was referring to the code written by the early "hackers", in university labs. Of course there was computer code being run to compute payrolls and run industrial systems. But you'll notice that that code was very rigorously written, and an Easter egg of this sort would not have been accepted into those codebases.

sgentle 8y ago

Be careful not to confuse solemn and serious. If the Apollo engineers could have fun shooting a tin can at the moon and the Manhattan Project engineers could have fun creating humanity's most terrible weapon, you can have fun making a VC-backed webapp or back-office database. Don't let anyone convince you engineers having fun is the reason for all the garbage software. That's pure stockholm syndrome. The reason for garbage software is that developers aren't treated like real engineers, and don't act like real engineers. They're children in a room full of adults making Important Business Decisions That They Just Need To Accept. So what if those decisions are bad engineering? You're not a real engineer anyway so listen to the grownups. The worst part is they do it to themselves. In the biggest sellers market in history, developers don't put their feet down about bad decisions because b-b-but I might get fired! They passively watch, nod sagely when it all goes to shit and say "mmm, I knew that was going to happen" like ignoring the responsibility that comes with professional training is something to be proud of. You think sales people make more money because they studied harder? It's because they know their value. You think lawyers get taken more seriously because they dress better? It's because they are personally and professionally liable for everything they say - or don't say - to a client. You think doctors have more autonomy because they never have any fun? It's because every doctor knows that no extenuating circumstances, no "but management said", no piece of paper can ever clean the blood from their hands. Believing that the problem is easter eggs is buying into the same mindset that brought us here in the first place. Those naughty developers again! Gosh, when will they start wearing ties to work, sit patiently in meetings while we talk at them, and then sign off on half-finished garbage code? Don't they know we have a business to run! But the Challenger didn't explode because of Silly Shirt Friday. It exploded because management didn't respect their engineers. When the first fatal microservice is written, it won't be because developers had fun. It'll be because they don't respect themselves.

quanticle 8y ago
>But the Challenger didn't explode because of Silly Shirt Friday. It exploded because management didn't respect their engineers. That's a myth. I encourage you to read Challenger Launch Decision, by Diane Vaughan. Challenger didn't explode because management disrespected their engineers. Challenger exploded because the engineers themselves normalized deviance. They would launch, observe anomalous results, note that the system hadn't failed, and then expand the envelope of normality to include the anomalous results. At no point did the team working on the SRBs say, "No, we should stop the Shuttle program and redesign the booster," not even to other engineers. Repeatedly, in interviews, engineers expressed surprise and shock at the failure, because they thought that the problem of O-ring blow-by was a minor problem that could be fixed with tweaks. Indeed, on many an occasion, they thought that they had fixed it, only for the issue to recur in the future. It's easy and comforting for us engineers to think that Challenger was due to myopia on the behalf of NASA management. But it's wrong. Challenger was the result of cascade failure of rationality all throughout the NASA organization, and the engineers are as culpable as the managers.