4 ms·

The same who say that never gets around to the tweaks

by hedvig 7y ago

Ididntdothis 7y ago
This reminds me of a lot of devs who don’t bother understanding a working but old system and immediately declare it’s crap that needs a total rewrite :)
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  And sometimes an old system actually does need a total rewrite because it's leaking PII everywhere, prone to completely crashing every couple of years and struggles to interface with automation.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    And very often it would keep working nicely with just a few minor changes.
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      A few minor changes that never arrive because your company dictates you add new features and functionality than fix tech debt (because tech debt doesn't earn more money). So you have large parts of the codebase which are actively on fire, but not too much on fire that it's costing money yet. Until you run into a hard wall trying to integrate new features that customers request which break the entire system and before you know it, you're still running on C# 3 while all of the other APIs and companies have long upgraded to C# 8 (or switched languages altogether). Then your wildfire turns into a firestorm and your customers start calling in. And they're pissed.
throwaway2048 7y ago
Reminds me of the people who say that regulations strangles innovation, and is the reason why $HUGE_COMPANIES dominate, we must remove the regulations and promote a free market where quality goes up and prices come down, except the second part rarely seems to end up happening, but not before the controls that helped mitigate the abuse of the large players get removed.
- Animats 7y ago
  OK, so let's take free markets seriously. The EU has a study which I cited in a previous posting indicating that price competition requires four substantial sellers. One is a monopoly, two tend to implicitly cooperate as a duopoly, sometimes there's competition with three but often two of those dominate as a duopoly, but with four, price competition usually appears. It takes at least four players to have a free market. So, less than four players in a market, and Government constraints kick in. Breakups, blocks on mergers, restrictions on expansion, higher taxes and closer scrutiny for the top 3. The US used to do stuff like that. The EU now does. Now that's a free market.

The same who say that never gets around to the tweaks

by hedvig 7y ago

The same who say that never gets around to the tweaks

This reminds me of a lot of devs who don’t bother understanding a working but old system and immediately declare it’s crap that needs a total rewrite :)

fzeroracer 7y ago
And sometimes an old system actually does need a total rewrite because it's leaking PII everywhere, prone to completely crashing every couple of years and struggles to interface with automation.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  And very often it would keep working nicely with just a few minor changes.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    A few minor changes that never arrive because your company dictates you add new features and functionality than fix tech debt (because tech debt doesn't earn more money). So you have large parts of the codebase which are actively on fire, but not too much on fire that it's costing money yet. Until you run into a hard wall trying to integrate new features that customers request which break the entire system and before you know it, you're still running on C# 3 while all of the other APIs and companies have long upgraded to C# 8 (or switched languages altogether). Then your wildfire turns into a firestorm and your customers start calling in. And they're pissed.

throwaway2048 7y ago

Reminds me of the people who say that regulations strangles innovation, and is the reason why $HUGE_COMPANIES dominate, we must remove the regulations and promote a free market where quality goes up and prices come down, except the second part rarely seems to end up happening, but not before the controls that helped mitigate the abuse of the large players get removed.

Animats 7y ago
OK, so let's take free markets seriously. The EU has a study which I cited in a previous posting indicating that price competition requires four substantial sellers. One is a monopoly, two tend to implicitly cooperate as a duopoly, sometimes there's competition with three but often two of those dominate as a duopoly, but with four, price competition usually appears. It takes at least four players to have a free market. So, less than four players in a market, and Government constraints kick in. Breakups, blocks on mergers, restrictions on expansion, higher taxes and closer scrutiny for the top 3. The US used to do stuff like that. The EU now does. Now that's a free market.