4 ms·

Tee-Ball

35 points by eitland 7y ago

pacaro 7y ago
Somewhat off topic, but is there any other stick-and-ball game (other than baseball and it's derivatives) where the fielders use a mitt/glove? The other related sports (including baseball's origin sport 'rounders') all require barehanded fielding (AFAIK), with the occasional exception on a specialist backstop (e.g. the wicket keeper in cricket)
- maw 7y ago
  The closest I can think of is a trapper, worn by a goalie in hockey. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_(ice_hockey) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_(ice_hockey)
will_pseudonym 7y ago
Naive question - What makes deployment more difficult than development?
- cobbzilla 7y ago
  The same thing that makes writing a grade-A essay harder than verbally explaining your idea to the professor. Both require slinging words with meaning, but the stakes are higher for the written paper: it needs to stand on its own and “defend itself”.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  I develop in a well-controlled environment. When I deploy I'm opening my app up to a whole uncontrolled world of chaos.
superbaconman 7y ago
The list of crap to consider when deploying code is disgusting: Do you ship a single binary or do you copy a boat load of language files over? Do you use your languages special packaging tool or do you use something like rpm? How do you handle dependency conflicts? Where on the box do you store your files? What should the default config look like? How do I populate my prod config? What about app install scripts? Do I use puppet or ansible to manage packages and configs? How do I know if my application stops running? What if it hangs? Should I put my app behind nginx or apache? How do I configure my firewall? What about backups? Is your SSL cert up to date?
- drharby 7y ago
  Thats part of the job
- echelon 7y ago
  > The list of crap to consider when deploying code is disgusting This is why we get paid enough that we can retire in a mere decade. > Do you ship a single binary or do you copy a boat load of language files over? Rust or Go? Single binary. But you should ship containers regardless of language and just not care. > Do you use your languages special packaging tool or do you use something like rpm? DO NOT USE THE HOST PACKAGE MANAGER. Version and lock your dependencies. Vendor them. Don't get tangled up in the OS. That'll double the trouble. Then build and ship containers. Don't ever run bare metal unless you want to be tied to it as a design contract. > How do you handle dependency conflicts? A monorepo helps tremendously. You seldom deal with dependency issues, and every bump is handled by one person once in most cases. But people tend to hate these for some reason. I happen to think they work even for small orgs. > Where on the box do you store your files? Firstly, use containers. But as for where to place them, the homedir or /data is perfect. But it doesn't really matter that much if you make a single choice and stick with it across your apps. > What should the default config look like? Like development. > How do I populate my prod config? prod = development, but overrides for the prod topology. Perhaps this varies wildly for apps that use many sharded databases. This is the nature of our work. > What about app install scripts? Docker / K8S. Don't bake them into the runtime lifecycle if possible. > Do I use puppet or ansible to manage packages and configs? Version control your config. You won't have secrets in them. > How do I know if my application stops running? Metrics + PagerDuty > What if it hangs? Metrics + PagerDuty > Should I put my app behind nginx or apache? Rust or Go won't need this. Swift might work too. Ruby and Python, maybe. Sounds like a lot of work. You can launch it as a sidecar or DaemonSet, perhaps. I shy away from scripting languages that need to be load balanced. You're stretching a solution beyond its limits, and there are modern languages and platforms that won't need this. > How do I configure my firewall? Envoy, Calico. Default policies to DENY all except what you carve out. > What about backups? For your databases, file uploads, and last few weeks of production builds. > Is your SSL cert up to date? Monitoring and paging helps here too.
dustingetz 7y ago
Let's refactor the posed question to: what natural forces circumstances and history of evolution have led to the current situation? MS Access (1992) and Visual Basic (1991) could be pitched as a Tee-stand for software. Why didn't they take over? What happened in the 90s? The world wide web. Microsoft was over here playing desktop tee-ball while web technologies ate their lunch. It takes time to smooth out a software stack, but it keeps getting disrupted every ten years.
- Crinus 7y ago
  Well, they did took over when it came to desktop. But in the 2000s the web became popular as a target for applications so their desktop dominance wasn't the only thing that mattered. However in their niches MS Access and Excel (VB not anymore but that was because Microsoft forcefully killed it, not because the developers that used it decided by themselves to move away from it) are still dominant (in fact so dominant that they overflow from these "niches" - see how many stories of Excel VBA doing things that weren't "supposed" to be done in Excel).
- nine_k 7y ago
  If you want a replacement for Visual Basic, take Ruby on Rails. It lets you do a lot of simple things easily and quickly, and provides enough hand-holding for a beginner. No such thing around the frontend, though. No form designer. There are several things that generate crude but working HTML from simple descriptions, though. Very much like a VB program, such an app is hard to make look polished, but it's not the point.
cma 7y ago
>There is no assistance like a sticky ball or glove. Maybe no kids leagues use it, but there are sticky balls and gloves using velcro that are used in informal play, usually in indoor gyms and/or just for little kids playing in the backyard.
abeyer 7y ago
Isn't the author just asking for a shared hosting plan? That used to be the default thing that everyone started with. (well, unless you had a shell account with a `public_html` already) They aren't the trendy new thing, but they're more than adequate for most beginner projects. They work quite well even up to pretty reasonable scale for SPA frontend-focused apps, and "deployment" consists of `scp` or a friendly gui client.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  repl.it, a YC company, is tee ball for deploying software.
jyrkesh 7y ago
For me, tee-ball was writing C into the Pico text editor, gcc'ing it, and running it. Pitching and hitting was the first time I ever opened an IDE. Now I know my way around, but the learning curve on firing up VS or Eclipse the first time (can't remember which it was): holy crap.
vparikh 7y ago
Well most of us older devs had what could be called "Tee-Ball" for software developers. Back in the day it was generally referred to as the home computer. You had multiple kinds, that stressed different priorities - like the Commodore 64, Atari 800 series, Apple II etc. Pick your favorite. The unifying concept was they were simple machines, with a basic feature set. Came well documented and when you turned them on they dumped you into a BASIC shell. Everyone typed in something to the effect: 10 print "Hello" 20 goto 10 Run No compilers, editors, linkers, deployment, security rights. Nothing. Just turn it on and type simple stuff. Screw up the machine -- just power on, power off. Bam - you get to the default stable state to try again. Get into the complexity when you are ready and willing to deal with it. Brilliant. Kids today don't have that.

35 points by eitland 7y ago

Somewhat off topic, but is there any other stick-and-ball game (other than baseball and it's derivatives) where the fielders use a mitt/glove? The other related sports (including baseball's origin sport 'rounders') all require barehanded fielding (AFAIK), with the occasional exception on a specialist backstop (e.g. the wicket keeper in cricket)

maw 7y ago
The closest I can think of is a trapper, worn by a goalie in hockey. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_(ice_hockey) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_(ice_hockey)

will_pseudonym 7y ago

Naive question - What makes deployment more difficult than development?

cobbzilla 7y ago
The same thing that makes writing a grade-A essay harder than verbally explaining your idea to the professor. Both require slinging words with meaning, but the stakes are higher for the written paper: it needs to stand on its own and “defend itself”.
chrisseaton 7y ago
I develop in a well-controlled environment. When I deploy I'm opening my app up to a whole uncontrolled world of chaos.

superbaconman 7y ago

The list of crap to consider when deploying code is disgusting: Do you ship a single binary or do you copy a boat load of language files over? Do you use your languages special packaging tool or do you use something like rpm? How do you handle dependency conflicts? Where on the box do you store your files? What should the default config look like? How do I populate my prod config? What about app install scripts? Do I use puppet or ansible to manage packages and configs? How do I know if my application stops running? What if it hangs? Should I put my app behind nginx or apache? How do I configure my firewall? What about backups? Is your SSL cert up to date?

drharby 7y ago
Thats part of the job
echelon 7y ago
> The list of crap to consider when deploying code is disgusting This is why we get paid enough that we can retire in a mere decade. > Do you ship a single binary or do you copy a boat load of language files over? Rust or Go? Single binary. But you should ship containers regardless of language and just not care. > Do you use your languages special packaging tool or do you use something like rpm? DO NOT USE THE HOST PACKAGE MANAGER. Version and lock your dependencies. Vendor them. Don't get tangled up in the OS. That'll double the trouble. Then build and ship containers. Don't ever run bare metal unless you want to be tied to it as a design contract. > How do you handle dependency conflicts? A monorepo helps tremendously. You seldom deal with dependency issues, and every bump is handled by one person once in most cases. But people tend to hate these for some reason. I happen to think they work even for small orgs. > Where on the box do you store your files? Firstly, use containers. But as for where to place them, the homedir or /data is perfect. But it doesn't really matter that much if you make a single choice and stick with it across your apps. > What should the default config look like? Like development. > How do I populate my prod config? prod = development, but overrides for the prod topology. Perhaps this varies wildly for apps that use many sharded databases. This is the nature of our work. > What about app install scripts? Docker / K8S. Don't bake them into the runtime lifecycle if possible. > Do I use puppet or ansible to manage packages and configs? Version control your config. You won't have secrets in them. > How do I know if my application stops running? Metrics + PagerDuty > What if it hangs? Metrics + PagerDuty > Should I put my app behind nginx or apache? Rust or Go won't need this. Swift might work too. Ruby and Python, maybe. Sounds like a lot of work. You can launch it as a sidecar or DaemonSet, perhaps. I shy away from scripting languages that need to be load balanced. You're stretching a solution beyond its limits, and there are modern languages and platforms that won't need this. > How do I configure my firewall? Envoy, Calico. Default policies to DENY all except what you carve out. > What about backups? For your databases, file uploads, and last few weeks of production builds. > Is your SSL cert up to date? Monitoring and paging helps here too.

dustingetz 7y ago

Let's refactor the posed question to: what natural forces circumstances and history of evolution have led to the current situation? MS Access (1992) and Visual Basic (1991) could be pitched as a Tee-stand for software. Why didn't they take over? What happened in the 90s? The world wide web. Microsoft was over here playing desktop tee-ball while web technologies ate their lunch. It takes time to smooth out a software stack, but it keeps getting disrupted every ten years.

Crinus 7y ago
Well, they did took over when it came to desktop. But in the 2000s the web became popular as a target for applications so their desktop dominance wasn't the only thing that mattered. However in their niches MS Access and Excel (VB not anymore but that was because Microsoft forcefully killed it, not because the developers that used it decided by themselves to move away from it) are still dominant (in fact so dominant that they overflow from these "niches" - see how many stories of Excel VBA doing things that weren't "supposed" to be done in Excel).
nine_k 7y ago
If you want a replacement for Visual Basic, take Ruby on Rails. It lets you do a lot of simple things easily and quickly, and provides enough hand-holding for a beginner. No such thing around the frontend, though. No form designer. There are several things that generate crude but working HTML from simple descriptions, though. Very much like a VB program, such an app is hard to make look polished, but it's not the point.

cma 7y ago

>There is no assistance like a sticky ball or glove. Maybe no kids leagues use it, but there are sticky balls and gloves using velcro that are used in informal play, usually in indoor gyms and/or just for little kids playing in the backyard.

abeyer 7y ago

Isn't the author just asking for a shared hosting plan? That used to be the default thing that everyone started with. (well, unless you had a shell account with a `public_html` already) They aren't the trendy new thing, but they're more than adequate for most beginner projects. They work quite well even up to pretty reasonable scale for SPA frontend-focused apps, and "deployment" consists of `scp` or a friendly gui client.

lonelappde 7y ago
repl.it, a YC company, is tee ball for deploying software.

jyrkesh 7y ago

For me, tee-ball was writing C into the Pico text editor, gcc'ing it, and running it. Pitching and hitting was the first time I ever opened an IDE. Now I know my way around, but the learning curve on firing up VS or Eclipse the first time (can't remember which it was): holy crap.

vparikh 7y ago

Well most of us older devs had what could be called "Tee-Ball" for software developers. Back in the day it was generally referred to as the home computer. You had multiple kinds, that stressed different priorities - like the Commodore 64, Atari 800 series, Apple II etc. Pick your favorite. The unifying concept was they were simple machines, with a basic feature set. Came well documented and when you turned them on they dumped you into a BASIC shell. Everyone typed in something to the effect: 10 print "Hello" 20 goto 10 Run No compilers, editors, linkers, deployment, security rights. Nothing. Just turn it on and type simple stuff. Screw up the machine -- just power on, power off. Bam - you get to the default stable state to try again. Get into the complexity when you are ready and willing to deal with it. Brilliant. Kids today don't have that.