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> If we switched from phillips to torx, and your favorite tool brand didn't make torx drivers yet, you've got to either convince them to start, or switch brands

> If we switched from phillips to torx, and your favorite tool brand didn't make torx drivers yet, you've got to either convince them to start, or switch brands. This is the best analogy I have yet read. Thanks - you nailed an argument I have had at multiple gigs/clients way to often. > Professionals don't get to use this as an excuse to badmouth torx, and stick with phillips. D'accord. Exactly. I had very fruitful discussions with professional builders about tools, tool brands and their respective strengths and weaknesses - but never has a professional decried Bosch Pro vs Makita vs DeWalt. One has ones favorites - and that is fine. But badmouthing - I have never encountered.

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kortilla 7y ago
Well it’s a shitty analogy because a swap to torx is basically a single API change. The switch to py3 is more akin to using a new building material. Easy to start with once you know the differences, but it’s a bitch to retrofit if you depend on a method of construction incompatible with it. “Go change the dependency” is a naive ideal. Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work.
- deleted 7y ago
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- enraged_camel 7y ago
  >>”Go change the dependency” is a naive ideal. Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work If you don’t push your clients/employer to have room in their budgets for these types of things, you are the one being naive.
- code_sloth 7y ago
  > Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work. The thing about debt is that ignoring it doesn't make it go away magically. If business relies on tech for crucial functions, it's only a matter of time before debt comes due.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work. That's fine. I'm sure there are some that also don't have a budget for fire insurance, or a security system, or whatever. For anybody who wants to gamble with no fire insurance, or not fixing tech debt, that's a conscious choice they get to make. Now they have to be responsible for the outcome(s) of their choices.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    "Hey boss, we're gonna use this hip new language that will break everything for no good reason a few years down the line." Congratulations. You're fired.
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      "Hey Joe, why did our customer database get leaked and published on a dark-net site?" "Hey boss, we're using an outdated programming language for which security updates are no longer provided, because we were told there's no budget for fixing technical debt." "Congratulations, you're fired." Same outcome either way... might as well make some effort to do the right thing along the way...
      - gridlockd 7y ago
        You're missing the point. If decision makers saw it coming that Python will just break in two, they would have never allowed its use. Other "serious" programming languages rarely if ever break, and when they do, it's usually minor. Python2 will almost certainly still remain in widespread use and it will still get security updates through alternative distribution channels. It's not that much work fixing such relatively rare issues versus migrating a major codebase.
        mindcrime 7y ago
        It's not "broken"... Python3 is just the evolution of the language. Languages change and evolve, some more and some less than others. Sure, Java or COBOL maybe have done a better job of not breaking backwards compatibility, but Python 3 isn't exactly Perl 6 here. But hey, if some 3rd party group effectively forks the language and maintains a Python2 branch after the official EOL date, good on them. But I'd argue that using that is risky in the same way that using a Pale Moon or Waterfox is (arguably) riskier than using mainstream Firefox.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > “Go change the dependency” is a naive ideal. Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work. Every non-tech business that maintains technical infrastructure finds itself doing that kind of tech-debt work regularly (if, often, chronically behind the vendors recommended schedule) for every platform they use Py2 to Py3 may (or may not, really) have been a bit more painful than a (multistep, because those types of shops never do it timely enough that a single-version-bump makes sense) .NET framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Windows Server upgrade (and, yeah, those often happen together as multistep upgrades in slow enterprise shops), but it's not a fundamentally different kind of problem (and replacing dependencies that didn't make the same upgrade, often because they were abandoned years before the firm made it's upgrades, is often a part of that.)
geekles 7y ago
You've never encountered badmouthing from a pro builder about other tool brands? How many did you talk to? Builders make the Ford v Chevy debates look minimal in comparison.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  I think he means more 'craftsman' vs. 'builder' in mentioning professionals. I don't think there's a time I can remember when Norm Abram (probably now one of the greatest or at least most prominent carpenters of a generation) ever mentioned the particular tool brands he was using. And looking back on earlier seasons of This Old House, he was hand-nailing thousands of nails a day (nowadays he and everyone else often uses pneumatic tools for this). I'm sure he prefers a certain brand, but unlike popular YouTube personalities and more 'celebrity' builders, he isn't a brand ambassador for Craftsman, DeWalt, Milwaukee, Ryobi, etc. But yeah, when you talk about 'builders' (the more common carpenters you encounter on most job sites), it seems like most of them will die on a sword defending whatever brand(s) they've sunk a fortune into. I'm a DeWalt guy, mostly because I invested in a 20V Max drill a long time ago and have a ton of batteries for all my electric tools now. But I used to use Makita before switching systems. I wouldn't call myself a master carpenter by any means, but like AvE, I find good and bad in almost all the 'top tier' lines from tool manufacturers.
  - tomnipotent 7y ago
    Every "craftsman" I know is fanatical about the tools they . use, be they carpenters, chefs, artists, or programmers. Also, let's just call a craftsman what they are - experienced builders.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Weird. I'd say the attitude exhibited by De Niro's character Sam in Ronin is more common. They're just tools. You want it written in C for a 16bit bargain basement ALU? I can do that. You want two implementations, one in Pascal and the other in PHP? Not a problem. You want my advice? No? That's fine too, the advice is expensive and who knows after all these years if it's even worth anything.
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kortilla 7y ago

Well it’s a shitty analogy because a swap to torx is basically a single API change. The switch to py3 is more akin to using a new building material. Easy to start with once you know the differences, but it’s a bitch to retrofit if you depend on a method of construction incompatible with it. “Go change the dependency” is a naive ideal. Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work.

deleted 7y ago
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enraged_camel 7y ago
>>”Go change the dependency” is a naive ideal. Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work If you don’t push your clients/employer to have room in their budgets for these types of things, you are the one being naive.
code_sloth 7y ago
> Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work. The thing about debt is that ignoring it doesn't make it go away magically. If business relies on tech for crucial functions, it's only a matter of time before debt comes due.
mindcrime 7y ago
Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work. That's fine. I'm sure there are some that also don't have a budget for fire insurance, or a security system, or whatever. For anybody who wants to gamble with no fire insurance, or not fixing tech debt, that's a conscious choice they get to make. Now they have to be responsible for the outcome(s) of their choices.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  "Hey boss, we're gonna use this hip new language that will break everything for no good reason a few years down the line." Congratulations. You're fired.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    "Hey Joe, why did our customer database get leaked and published on a dark-net site?" "Hey boss, we're using an outdated programming language for which security updates are no longer provided, because we were told there's no budget for fixing technical debt." "Congratulations, you're fired." Same outcome either way... might as well make some effort to do the right thing along the way...
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      You're missing the point. If decision makers saw it coming that Python will just break in two, they would have never allowed its use. Other "serious" programming languages rarely if ever break, and when they do, it's usually minor. Python2 will almost certainly still remain in widespread use and it will still get security updates through alternative distribution channels. It's not that much work fixing such relatively rare issues versus migrating a major codebase.
      - mindcrime 7y ago
        It's not "broken"... Python3 is just the evolution of the language. Languages change and evolve, some more and some less than others. Sure, Java or COBOL maybe have done a better job of not breaking backwards compatibility, but Python 3 isn't exactly Perl 6 here. But hey, if some 3rd party group effectively forks the language and maintains a Python2 branch after the official EOL date, good on them. But I'd argue that using that is risky in the same way that using a Pale Moon or Waterfox is (arguably) riskier than using mainstream Firefox.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> “Go change the dependency” is a naive ideal. Most non-tech businesses have no budget for that kind of tech debt work. Every non-tech business that maintains technical infrastructure finds itself doing that kind of tech-debt work regularly (if, often, chronically behind the vendors recommended schedule) for every platform they use Py2 to Py3 may (or may not, really) have been a bit more painful than a (multistep, because those types of shops never do it timely enough that a single-version-bump makes sense) .NET framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Windows Server upgrade (and, yeah, those often happen together as multistep upgrades in slow enterprise shops), but it's not a fundamentally different kind of problem (and replacing dependencies that didn't make the same upgrade, often because they were abandoned years before the firm made it's upgrades, is often a part of that.)

geekles 7y ago

You've never encountered badmouthing from a pro builder about other tool brands? How many did you talk to? Builders make the Ford v Chevy debates look minimal in comparison.

geerlingguy 7y ago
I think he means more 'craftsman' vs. 'builder' in mentioning professionals. I don't think there's a time I can remember when Norm Abram (probably now one of the greatest or at least most prominent carpenters of a generation) ever mentioned the particular tool brands he was using. And looking back on earlier seasons of This Old House, he was hand-nailing thousands of nails a day (nowadays he and everyone else often uses pneumatic tools for this). I'm sure he prefers a certain brand, but unlike popular YouTube personalities and more 'celebrity' builders, he isn't a brand ambassador for Craftsman, DeWalt, Milwaukee, Ryobi, etc. But yeah, when you talk about 'builders' (the more common carpenters you encounter on most job sites), it seems like most of them will die on a sword defending whatever brand(s) they've sunk a fortune into. I'm a DeWalt guy, mostly because I invested in a 20V Max drill a long time ago and have a ton of batteries for all my electric tools now. But I used to use Makita before switching systems. I wouldn't call myself a master carpenter by any means, but like AvE, I find good and bad in almost all the 'top tier' lines from tool manufacturers.
- tomnipotent 7y ago
  Every "craftsman" I know is fanatical about the tools they . use, be they carpenters, chefs, artists, or programmers. Also, let's just call a craftsman what they are - experienced builders.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Weird. I'd say the attitude exhibited by De Niro's character Sam in Ronin is more common. They're just tools. You want it written in C for a 16bit bargain basement ALU? I can do that. You want two implementations, one in Pascal and the other in PHP? Not a problem. You want my advice? No? That's fine too, the advice is expensive and who knows after all these years if it's even worth anything.

deleted 7y ago

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