5 ms·

I think it's easy to forget that modern tooling (+AWS/GCP/Azure) let's one dev match or exceed the productivity of 15 developers and a couple of PMs in 2005.

SQueeeeeL 6y ago
That's a very specific meaning, like in terms of scaling maybe? But in terms of actually meaningful problems solved for end users... But there very nature large scale systems aren't very common, but everyone is chasing that unicorn startup which can serve 10 million users; so scalable APIs are more "practical" then simple workflows
- phkahler 6y ago
  Scalability seems overhyped. If you write small efficient systems they can handle a lot of work. If you use big clunky frameworks that convert simple things into map-reduce style problems of course you're going to care about scalability and how much your AWS bill is going to be.
  - ditonal 6y ago
    I could not agree more. In many technical interviews, they want to talk about "scalability", using fancy big data software for horizontal scalability etc But I also know from experience that many, many of these problems would be more elegantly solved by more traditional tools like Postgres, especially since servers have gotten more powerful, the cloud service options more plentiful and reliable, and the software more optimized. The "scalable" approach can lead to massive amounts of wasted person hours unless you're sure you really need it. But if you say, "just use RDS or CloudSQL, or maybe BigQuery", you get perceived as a newb by the 24 year old who just got his MS doing Spark work on toy problems.
mattmanser 6y ago
It's a laughable claim to say one developer has replaced 15, and obviously not true. The vast majority of code was business logic and still is. Today's 'process' is no more efficient than, say, deploying rails to heroku in 2007. And even before that, you'd spend half a day writing an automatic deployment script, and then deployments would take a couple of clicks and you'd never think about it again.
SahAssar 6y ago
I'm not sure if you think all devs 15 years ago where stupid or all devs today are awesome, but either way I'd say you're wrong.
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  He means that tools have improved.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    If tooling means a 15+x improvement then it seems like it is one or the other.
oalae5niMiel7qu 6y ago
I spent all day today and Friday just trying to get a Google Cloud Composer project to run locally. I'm still waiting for that increased productivity that modern tooling supposedly grants me.

SQueeeeeL 6y ago

That's a very specific meaning, like in terms of scaling maybe? But in terms of actually meaningful problems solved for end users... But there very nature large scale systems aren't very common, but everyone is chasing that unicorn startup which can serve 10 million users; so scalable APIs are more "practical" then simple workflows

phkahler 6y ago
Scalability seems overhyped. If you write small efficient systems they can handle a lot of work. If you use big clunky frameworks that convert simple things into map-reduce style problems of course you're going to care about scalability and how much your AWS bill is going to be.
- ditonal 6y ago
  I could not agree more. In many technical interviews, they want to talk about "scalability", using fancy big data software for horizontal scalability etc But I also know from experience that many, many of these problems would be more elegantly solved by more traditional tools like Postgres, especially since servers have gotten more powerful, the cloud service options more plentiful and reliable, and the software more optimized. The "scalable" approach can lead to massive amounts of wasted person hours unless you're sure you really need it. But if you say, "just use RDS or CloudSQL, or maybe BigQuery", you get perceived as a newb by the 24 year old who just got his MS doing Spark work on toy problems.

mattmanser 6y ago

It's a laughable claim to say one developer has replaced 15, and obviously not true. The vast majority of code was business logic and still is. Today's 'process' is no more efficient than, say, deploying rails to heroku in 2007. And even before that, you'd spend half a day writing an automatic deployment script, and then deployments would take a couple of clicks and you'd never think about it again.

SahAssar 6y ago

I'm not sure if you think all devs 15 years ago where stupid or all devs today are awesome, but either way I'd say you're wrong.

adamnemecek 6y ago
He means that tools have improved.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  If tooling means a 15+x improvement then it seems like it is one or the other.

oalae5niMiel7qu 6y ago

I spent all day today and Friday just trying to get a Google Cloud Composer project to run locally. I'm still waiting for that increased productivity that modern tooling supposedly grants me.