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A big part of it is that imho technology has gotten more powerful, but still no easy to use. Like, I'm imagining in 20 years the API for Amazon's drone fleet w

by Pxtl 7y ago

A big part of it is that imho technology has gotten more powerful, but still no easy to use. Like, I'm imagining in 20 years the API for Amazon's drone fleet will be here and we'll still be like "wait, the address parameter is for an IP address? And the library isn't thread-safe but also doesn't connection pool so I have to maintain one dronecloud client per thread? And what's this cryptic "rotor invert" error? It feels like half my job is googling how to do common things in popular libraries and finding completely counter-intuitive pain-points.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thatoneuser 7y ago
A great example of this is AWS. I'm not a power user but I dabble. You have to go back and forth through user docs that all have some % of the correct steps, but no single doc has all of the correct steps. Some reference deprecated api, some just never seemed to work in the first place and you wonder how it even got there. I get that these ecosystems evolve over time but I'm not convinced that that evolution requires inability to use the underlying features effectively.
- Acen 7y ago
  I connect with this at a spiritual level right now. We're building some new infrastructure for a service that is also new, using terraform. Which only our devops have used before. It's an interesting time. AWS Cognito with app clients and not user pools + AWS API gateway, connecting to a system linked with dynamodb, Kinesis data stream and firehose. Like each part stand alone is documented okay with specific circumstances. But nothing interlinking at anything past the basic level. Trial and error is brutal.
  - hallman76 7y ago
    You're trying to take off while still building the plane. So is AWS.
  - isubasinghe 7y ago
    Oh I can relate to this a lot as well, it is really hard to get some services on AWS working together. There is documentation but its always not enough. I find stackoverflow + trial and error the best way to resolve issues but it is quite a painful dev experience
- ddxxdd 7y ago
  I feel like Android and iPhone programming are exactly the same way. The official documentation is confusing and worthless to me.
  - thatoneuser 7y ago
    God yes. Android was my first big experience with this issue, and it was like my first time working with a big name modern library. The community was brutal. At least felt that way. Every other question met with snark and "wHy dOnT yoU rEaD documentation???" I get that with aws too. It's like you aren't following it cuz it's trash.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  Hah! Worse is over a day you open a dozen or so pages about a topic lets say SES and scan through them then later youre back to looking for some thing which you know exists on one of the pages and now you have to trawl over everything again trying to find it seemingly at random. It's like you need to keep an index of things in your head when reading AWS docs as you know the information is dispersed across multiple different places.
  - thatoneuser 7y ago
    Oh God. Playing the game with browser tabs where after 30 or so you start getting casual. Then one comes up you need and you know you closed it but no other details. Man life is crazy.

by Pxtl 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thatoneuser 7y ago

A great example of this is AWS. I'm not a power user but I dabble. You have to go back and forth through user docs that all have some % of the correct steps, but no single doc has all of the correct steps. Some reference deprecated api, some just never seemed to work in the first place and you wonder how it even got there. I get that these ecosystems evolve over time but I'm not convinced that that evolution requires inability to use the underlying features effectively.

Acen 7y ago
I connect with this at a spiritual level right now. We're building some new infrastructure for a service that is also new, using terraform. Which only our devops have used before. It's an interesting time. AWS Cognito with app clients and not user pools + AWS API gateway, connecting to a system linked with dynamodb, Kinesis data stream and firehose. Like each part stand alone is documented okay with specific circumstances. But nothing interlinking at anything past the basic level. Trial and error is brutal.
- hallman76 7y ago
  You're trying to take off while still building the plane. So is AWS.
- isubasinghe 7y ago
  Oh I can relate to this a lot as well, it is really hard to get some services on AWS working together. There is documentation but its always not enough. I find stackoverflow + trial and error the best way to resolve issues but it is quite a painful dev experience
ddxxdd 7y ago
I feel like Android and iPhone programming are exactly the same way. The official documentation is confusing and worthless to me.
- thatoneuser 7y ago
  God yes. Android was my first big experience with this issue, and it was like my first time working with a big name modern library. The community was brutal. At least felt that way. Every other question met with snark and "wHy dOnT yoU rEaD documentation???" I get that with aws too. It's like you aren't following it cuz it's trash.
thinkingemote 7y ago
Hah! Worse is over a day you open a dozen or so pages about a topic lets say SES and scan through them then later youre back to looking for some thing which you know exists on one of the pages and now you have to trawl over everything again trying to find it seemingly at random. It's like you need to keep an index of things in your head when reading AWS docs as you know the information is dispersed across multiple different places.
- thatoneuser 7y ago
  Oh God. Playing the game with browser tabs where after 30 or so you start getting casual. Then one comes up you need and you know you closed it but no other details. Man life is crazy.