7 ms·

The problem with the non-boring technology club is that programmers see what problem FAANG companies are solving and wanting to be on the edge on new technology

by tpetry 6y ago

The problem with the non-boring technology club is that programmers see what problem FAANG companies are solving and wanting to be on the edge on new technology too. But they don‘t have the same problems. Another problem is they want to show what they can do. If they tell in an interview they are working with rails/django and a postgresql database they fear they look incompetent using those old technologies. So they try to convince their companies their products need to be rewritten in mongodb, react with graphql in a micro service stack and many more state of the art technologies. And in the end many developer years are wasted just rewriting a working an existing software in a new stack they are not yet comfortable with and the new product is much less stable than the old one. I love basecamp for their hotwired stack and showing that you can make the great software with old boring technologies and just a little bit of javascript magic pixie dust.

threeseed 6y ago
Basecamp is a simple app though. Ridiculously simple. That app could have been written in the mid-1990s using WebObjects in just a few months. Technologies like MongoDB, React, GraphQL, Microservices etc exist because modern, real-world apps are generally far more advanced than just a glorified CRUD app. Consumers simply have higher expectations and more demands for what web apps should be able to do.
- overkalix 6y ago
  > modern, real-world apps are generally far more advanced than just a glorified CRUD app. ... are they?
  - reasonabl_human 6y ago
    ...yes
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  While this is somewhat true and you can't solve everything with Rails + Postgres, you should ask yourself very, very hard about whether what you're building is in that category (and further, whether every part of what you're building falls into that category). Far, far too often I think a significant source of complexity is enthusiastically added by engineers themselves assuming that the problem they're solving is sufficiently complex that boring technologies just aren't up to the requirements of their project. My current gig is writing a very traditional Rails app (we hardly even dabble in Stimulus or Javascript all that much). Prior to that, I worked on a Javascript-backed fully reactive real-time app using the latest and greatest of technologies. My boring old Rails app, IMHO, has a much nicer user experience, far fewer quality issues, and is well loved by customers, where the bleeding edge Javascript app was constantly deried by customers for being difficult to use, buggy and unintuitive. You can go a long way with simple technologies if you design your experiences well.
nizmow 6y ago
Typically though, FAANGs still solve their problems with boring technologies.
- usrusr 6y ago
  They are big enough to follow all paths concurrently. The F is famously doing their own PHP and while the G was tickling "shiny receptors" all over the world with Go (which ironically could be seen as an example in boring technology enlightenment, considering how it is basically a modern take on 1980ies language features), they were also doing so much plain old java that the parts of the internal tooling they did for maintaining their own sanity published as Guava easily had more impact on the viability of java as a language than everything Oracle has ever released (yes, including Java 8 lambdas).
  - kaba0 6y ago
    Your last point is just flat out false — even if sarcastic. Just to correct the misinformation, Java has been steadily improving since the Oracle years whether you like or hate oracle — the JVM is an absolute workhorse and new exciting features are underway.
- stepbeek 6y ago
  I was very disappointed when I joined Amazon to learn we were using plain old Java with servlets (this was 2015, I think kotlin is more common now). Since leaving I’m in awe of how sensible the technical decision making that led to that was.
  - redisman 6y ago
    I interviewed with Stripe and one of the engineers mentioned they’re transitioning many services to a exciting new technology called... Java. That was in 2021
    - winrid 6y ago
      It seems like everyone in my current org is very against Java, somehow they'd rather build backend systems in JS. I'll never get it.
djoldman 6y ago
> So they try to convince their companies their products need to be rewritten in mongodb, react with graphql in a micro service stack and many more state of the art technologies. I find it interesting that these technologies are considered "state of the art" (SOTA). What does SOTA mean in this context? I could see an argument for postgresql and rails/django being SOTA as I think many believe them to be fairly mature, secure, and feature complete.
cutler 6y ago
Yes, Hotwire is another game-changer from that genius DHH. So much so that Django and Laravel already have their own implementations. I just love the passion that guy has for what he does and his commitment to Ruby. I think Rails is an even better choice since it became boring.
- vyrotek 6y ago
  He's a smart guy but this feels more like a pendulum swing. ASP.NET had a similar implementation called AJAX UpdatePanels back in the mid 2000's.
rossdavidh 6y ago
All true, but I would like to add that their manager would like to say (when interviewing at FAANG) that they managed cool edgy new technology as well. So they are not motivated to stop these things because it sprinkles hot keywords on their resumes, as well.
thewarrior 6y ago
It’s because job hopping programmers are compensated for how rare their skill is in the market and not how much value they add to the business. It’s another flaw in capitalism. Reward employees a direct and substantial cut of the profits and incentivize to them to stay 5-10 years and these behaviors should disappear. The loss of job security, frequent job hopping has created more incentives to optimize for the next job switch and not value add. The explosion of startups also contributes to this. They often have to attract employees by offering the promise of autonomy. Most startup employees know they aren’t getting rich. So they milk the startup for maximum resume points and move on. The VCs unload these bloated companies into inflated stock markets and the cycle continues. DHH runs really small companies and pays his employees really well and doesn’t work them too hard. Employees have no real reason to leave. They see a direct link between the low overhead and their job security and work life balance. Aligning incentives fixes this.
soheil 6y ago
> they fear they look incompetent using those old technologies It sounds like you're saying the fear is unwarranted. It very much is a real fear as long as people interviewing them actually count that against them and value new tech.
soheil 6y ago
> they want to show what they can do Or more like it's the scarcity, by definition new tech still doesn't have many experts in it. So if you're one of the few that learns it you're all of a sudden pretty differentiated compared to your peers. Even if the new tech turns out to be pure garbage down the road it doesn't matter because in the meanwhile you can land the hippest jobs and win the admiration of your peers by being so far ahead of everyone else.
DC1350 6y ago
If you have a shitty job then it's really hard to get the experience you need for something better unless you invent problems. That's why making things way more complicated than they need to be is actually a good thing.

by tpetry 6y ago

threeseed 6y ago

Basecamp is a simple app though. Ridiculously simple. That app could have been written in the mid-1990s using WebObjects in just a few months. Technologies like MongoDB, React, GraphQL, Microservices etc exist because modern, real-world apps are generally far more advanced than just a glorified CRUD app. Consumers simply have higher expectations and more demands for what web apps should be able to do.

overkalix 6y ago
> modern, real-world apps are generally far more advanced than just a glorified CRUD app. ... are they?
- reasonabl_human 6y ago
  ...yes
ryanbrunner 6y ago
While this is somewhat true and you can't solve everything with Rails + Postgres, you should ask yourself very, very hard about whether what you're building is in that category (and further, whether every part of what you're building falls into that category). Far, far too often I think a significant source of complexity is enthusiastically added by engineers themselves assuming that the problem they're solving is sufficiently complex that boring technologies just aren't up to the requirements of their project. My current gig is writing a very traditional Rails app (we hardly even dabble in Stimulus or Javascript all that much). Prior to that, I worked on a Javascript-backed fully reactive real-time app using the latest and greatest of technologies. My boring old Rails app, IMHO, has a much nicer user experience, far fewer quality issues, and is well loved by customers, where the bleeding edge Javascript app was constantly deried by customers for being difficult to use, buggy and unintuitive. You can go a long way with simple technologies if you design your experiences well.

nizmow 6y ago

Typically though, FAANGs still solve their problems with boring technologies.

usrusr 6y ago
They are big enough to follow all paths concurrently. The F is famously doing their own PHP and while the G was tickling "shiny receptors" all over the world with Go (which ironically could be seen as an example in boring technology enlightenment, considering how it is basically a modern take on 1980ies language features), they were also doing so much plain old java that the parts of the internal tooling they did for maintaining their own sanity published as Guava easily had more impact on the viability of java as a language than everything Oracle has ever released (yes, including Java 8 lambdas).
- kaba0 6y ago
  Your last point is just flat out false — even if sarcastic. Just to correct the misinformation, Java has been steadily improving since the Oracle years whether you like or hate oracle — the JVM is an absolute workhorse and new exciting features are underway.
stepbeek 6y ago
I was very disappointed when I joined Amazon to learn we were using plain old Java with servlets (this was 2015, I think kotlin is more common now). Since leaving I’m in awe of how sensible the technical decision making that led to that was.
- redisman 6y ago
  I interviewed with Stripe and one of the engineers mentioned they’re transitioning many services to a exciting new technology called... Java. That was in 2021
  - winrid 6y ago
    It seems like everyone in my current org is very against Java, somehow they'd rather build backend systems in JS. I'll never get it.

djoldman 6y ago

> So they try to convince their companies their products need to be rewritten in mongodb, react with graphql in a micro service stack and many more state of the art technologies. I find it interesting that these technologies are considered "state of the art" (SOTA). What does SOTA mean in this context? I could see an argument for postgresql and rails/django being SOTA as I think many believe them to be fairly mature, secure, and feature complete.

cutler 6y ago

Yes, Hotwire is another game-changer from that genius DHH. So much so that Django and Laravel already have their own implementations. I just love the passion that guy has for what he does and his commitment to Ruby. I think Rails is an even better choice since it became boring.

vyrotek 6y ago
He's a smart guy but this feels more like a pendulum swing. ASP.NET had a similar implementation called AJAX UpdatePanels back in the mid 2000's.

rossdavidh 6y ago

All true, but I would like to add that their manager would like to say (when interviewing at FAANG) that they managed cool edgy new technology as well. So they are not motivated to stop these things because it sprinkles hot keywords on their resumes, as well.

thewarrior 6y ago

It’s because job hopping programmers are compensated for how rare their skill is in the market and not how much value they add to the business. It’s another flaw in capitalism. Reward employees a direct and substantial cut of the profits and incentivize to them to stay 5-10 years and these behaviors should disappear. The loss of job security, frequent job hopping has created more incentives to optimize for the next job switch and not value add. The explosion of startups also contributes to this. They often have to attract employees by offering the promise of autonomy. Most startup employees know they aren’t getting rich. So they milk the startup for maximum resume points and move on. The VCs unload these bloated companies into inflated stock markets and the cycle continues. DHH runs really small companies and pays his employees really well and doesn’t work them too hard. Employees have no real reason to leave. They see a direct link between the low overhead and their job security and work life balance. Aligning incentives fixes this.

soheil 6y ago

> they fear they look incompetent using those old technologies It sounds like you're saying the fear is unwarranted. It very much is a real fear as long as people interviewing them actually count that against them and value new tech.

soheil 6y ago

> they want to show what they can do Or more like it's the scarcity, by definition new tech still doesn't have many experts in it. So if you're one of the few that learns it you're all of a sudden pretty differentiated compared to your peers. Even if the new tech turns out to be pure garbage down the road it doesn't matter because in the meanwhile you can land the hippest jobs and win the admiration of your peers by being so far ahead of everyone else.

DC1350 6y ago

If you have a shitty job then it's really hard to get the experience you need for something better unless you invent problems. That's why making things way more complicated than they need to be is actually a good thing.