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> A team that fails to understand how to write modular code, is just going to write spaghetti RPC calls This is interesting. I always assumed we were talking a

> A team that fails to understand how to write modular code, is just going to write spaghetti RPC calls This is interesting. I always assumed we were talking about good developers here. I wonder what's a more likely cause for a failed attempt at microservices. Is it developer incompetence and lack of discipline, or is it environmental factors related to the product and the organization?

pjc50 6y ago
For almost all works produced by more than one developer the "good developer / bad developer" dichotomy is just useless social darwinism. Talking about the team, organisation, incentives, or business is far more useful. (My favourite example is John Romero, part of the very small team that produced Doom - but who also produced Daikatana, which keeps showing up on lists of notoriously bad games.)
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  That was pure hubris, foreshadowing GamerGate (and inventing the self-Pwn)! As you say, it's all about the team, not the technique. And talking about that particular team: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana >One advert for the game became notorious; a 1997 poster containing the phrase "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch[. Suck It Down.]". According to Mike Wilson, the advert was created by the same artist who designed the game's box art under order of their chosen advertising agency. Originally, both he and Romero thought it was funny and approved it. Romero had second thoughts soon after but was persuaded by Wilson to let it pass. Speaking ten years later, Romero said while wary of the slogan at the time, he went along with it as he had a reputation for similar crass phrases. In the same interview, he noted that reactions to the poster tarnished the game's image long before release, and continued to impact his public image and career. In a 2008 blog post concerning the recent activities of Wilson, Romero attributed him for the marketing tactic. This prompted a hostile exchange of public messages between the two at the time. At least he apologized, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw John Romero Apologizes for Trying to Make You His Bitch: https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100748-John-Romero-Apologizes-for-Trying-to-Make-You-His-Bitch https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100748-John-Romero... >I'm going to quote our very own Shamus Young here for a moment: For almost a decade, Ion Storm's Daikatana has been the example of "industry waste, arrogance, and incompetence, as well as a universal punchline for things that suck." The shooter was supposed to be an epic vision, the masterpiece of John Romero - the mastermind behind genre-defining Doom and Quake. >Then it came out in May of 2000, and it sucked. The arrogance and hubris that crippled Daikatana have been well chronicled over the years, but none of it is quite as infamous as the ad you see here to the right: "John Romero's About to Make You His Bitch. Suck it Down." It was a pretty ballsy statement in itself, but after the game's failure simply became laughable. John Romero Is So Sorry About Trying To Make You His Bitch: https://kotaku.com/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-make-you-his-bi-5541406 https://kotaku.com/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-m... >Game designer John Romero and John Romero's hair ruled the roost during the 1990s. With titles like Doom and Quake, he not only helped popularize the first-person shooter, he defined it. Then the unthinkable happened. He made Daikatana. >[...] Romero, who now says he is resigned to the ad, dished on the ad back in 2008, which evoked a saucy response from the marketer that spearheaded the suck-it-down campaign. Romero Dishes on the Ad: https://web.archive.org/web/20081225071219/http://kotaku.com/345386/john-romero-dishes-on-bitch-ad https://web.archive.org/web/20081225071219/http://kotaku.com... >[...] these are the kinds of jackass stunts he pulled [...] Suck-It-Down Campaign Marketer's Saucy Response: https://web.archive.org/web/20081225070532/http://kotaku.com/346816/gamecock-head-tears-into-john-romero-its-getting-ugly https://web.archive.org/web/20081225070532/http://kotaku.com... >[...] and ill advised breast implants strewn across this fair nation [...]
ratww 6y ago
IME it is always environmental factors. When you have 200 developers working on the same product without well defined boundaries it will be a mess with a monolith, and a mess with microservices. Also arbitrary rules such as "one service per team" or "one service per employee" that force engineers to jerry-rig things that don't belong together. Either allow them to make a new service, make or a new team, or admit that microservices are not single-purpose and are just a blob of multipurpose code. I've seen this way too much. Also pure organizational inertia working against good engineering practices: sometimes a team will be severely overworked while others are overstaffed. But god forbid there's a temporary reorganization to improve the work of engineers, so people send tasks to other teams, but there's minimal communication between engineers.

pjc50 6y ago

For almost all works produced by more than one developer the "good developer / bad developer" dichotomy is just useless social darwinism. Talking about the team, organisation, incentives, or business is far more useful. (My favourite example is John Romero, part of the very small team that produced Doom - but who also produced Daikatana, which keeps showing up on lists of notoriously bad games.)

DonHopkins 6y ago
That was pure hubris, foreshadowing GamerGate (and inventing the self-Pwn)! As you say, it's all about the team, not the technique. And talking about that particular team: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana >One advert for the game became notorious; a 1997 poster containing the phrase "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch[. Suck It Down.]". According to Mike Wilson, the advert was created by the same artist who designed the game's box art under order of their chosen advertising agency. Originally, both he and Romero thought it was funny and approved it. Romero had second thoughts soon after but was persuaded by Wilson to let it pass. Speaking ten years later, Romero said while wary of the slogan at the time, he went along with it as he had a reputation for similar crass phrases. In the same interview, he noted that reactions to the poster tarnished the game's image long before release, and continued to impact his public image and career. In a 2008 blog post concerning the recent activities of Wilson, Romero attributed him for the marketing tactic. This prompted a hostile exchange of public messages between the two at the time. At least he apologized, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw John Romero Apologizes for Trying to Make You His Bitch: https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100748-John-Romero-Apologizes-for-Trying-to-Make-You-His-Bitch https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100748-John-Romero... >I'm going to quote our very own Shamus Young here for a moment: For almost a decade, Ion Storm's Daikatana has been the example of "industry waste, arrogance, and incompetence, as well as a universal punchline for things that suck." The shooter was supposed to be an epic vision, the masterpiece of John Romero - the mastermind behind genre-defining Doom and Quake. >Then it came out in May of 2000, and it sucked. The arrogance and hubris that crippled Daikatana have been well chronicled over the years, but none of it is quite as infamous as the ad you see here to the right: "John Romero's About to Make You His Bitch. Suck it Down." It was a pretty ballsy statement in itself, but after the game's failure simply became laughable. John Romero Is So Sorry About Trying To Make You His Bitch: https://kotaku.com/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-make-you-his-bi-5541406 https://kotaku.com/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-m... >Game designer John Romero and John Romero's hair ruled the roost during the 1990s. With titles like Doom and Quake, he not only helped popularize the first-person shooter, he defined it. Then the unthinkable happened. He made Daikatana. >[...] Romero, who now says he is resigned to the ad, dished on the ad back in 2008, which evoked a saucy response from the marketer that spearheaded the suck-it-down campaign. Romero Dishes on the Ad: https://web.archive.org/web/20081225071219/http://kotaku.com/345386/john-romero-dishes-on-bitch-ad https://web.archive.org/web/20081225071219/http://kotaku.com... >[...] these are the kinds of jackass stunts he pulled [...] Suck-It-Down Campaign Marketer's Saucy Response: https://web.archive.org/web/20081225070532/http://kotaku.com/346816/gamecock-head-tears-into-john-romero-its-getting-ugly https://web.archive.org/web/20081225070532/http://kotaku.com... >[...] and ill advised breast implants strewn across this fair nation [...]

ratww 6y ago

IME it is always environmental factors. When you have 200 developers working on the same product without well defined boundaries it will be a mess with a monolith, and a mess with microservices. Also arbitrary rules such as "one service per team" or "one service per employee" that force engineers to jerry-rig things that don't belong together. Either allow them to make a new service, make or a new team, or admit that microservices are not single-purpose and are just a blob of multipurpose code. I've seen this way too much. Also pure organizational inertia working against good engineering practices: sometimes a team will be severely overworked while others are overstaffed. But god forbid there's a temporary reorganization to improve the work of engineers, so people send tasks to other teams, but there's minimal communication between engineers.