4 ms·

Hey if things ran efficiently and unecessary complexity was taboo then software developers, who manufacture a good that does not physically wear out with time,

Hey if things ran efficiently and unecessary complexity was taboo then software developers, who manufacture a good that does not physically wear out with time, would be earning a lot less money. But as things are today you got to pay a web developer say $100k a year to implement the latest kalefedhipster.js framework that doesn't actually provide significant additional functionality beyond what we had in 2015 if not 2005. I firmly believe that overgrown complexity is going to be one of the things that brings down the tech sphere if not civilization as a whole. It seems things are breaking far more frequently already. Even things like retail transactions are falling appart. Whereas 10-15 years ago you could go into walmart and grab something check out within 5 minutes. Now you can't. Of the twenty lanes only 4-5 are open at anytime. If you buy a refillable phone card the cashier does not know how to recharge it. If you try self checkout all 10 systems are rebooting after an upgrade. You insert your poorly engineered sim inspired "chip card." It fails three times, every time then you swipe. Meanwhile if you go on vacation 150 miles away and use your card, you card automatically locks because of a "suspcious transaction." Since it is Sunday your bank is not open but you can call tech support in India who after having you wait on hold for an hour transfers you to a different agent who you have to repeat the whole story to. Etc, etc, etc. It seems like simple things are getting more complicated every year, because new is good or new is safer or new is easier to track you with.

101008 5y ago
> to implement the latest kalefedhipster.js framework that doesn't actually provide significant additional functionality beyond what we had in 2015 if not 2005. Amen. How I miss old plain HTML websites.
- jrockway 5y ago
  I mean, if we only had plain old HTML for websites, all these people writing web applications would just be writing desktop applications. The complexity of the problems being solved wouldn't change, and it would basically be the same hell of large projects being done by large teams with little in the way of planning. The main difference would be that nothing would run on OS X or Linux, because it would be too costly to support. Microsoft would have 99.9% of the OS market, and it would cost $300 a month to have a license. (Remember when you couldn't do online banking on Linux because they all used ActiveX? I remember.) Basically, the field of software engineering wouldn't be any different. There would be different winners and we probably wouldn't have phones. But you'd still be using slow, confusing, crappy UIs, because that is the human condition. The programming language / platform wouldn't change any of that.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    > all these people writing web applications would just be writing desktop applications Good. > The complexity of the problems being solved wouldn't change, and it would basically be the same hell of large projects being done by large teams with little in the way of planning. That's a non sequitur... The complexity largely hasn't changed, it's been hidden by layers upon layers of libraries that aren't fully understood by the people building with them, even within the same company who built the library, and increasing levels of bloat. If it weren't for the never-ending pace of "marketing says we need a new UI" bugs might actually get fixed once in a while. Imagine if people went from "we need shared libraries for disk and memory efficiency" to "we need completely separate environments for every module of our program" in 20 years. Oh wait, that happened.
    - jrockway 5y ago
      There are plenty of non-web desktop apps that also never release any features, and whose engineers use the time saved from not dealing with "npm has found 600 security vulnerabilities that you can't update" to migrate their build system from Makefiles to Bazel or whatever. It's all the same -- the human race as a whole doesn't know how to deliver features with high velocity beyond a certain scale. The proprietary desktop apps I use basically get updated every few months with what seems like about a day's worth of work for one engineer. (I use Fusion 360, which might actually be a web app in desktop clothing, Datagrip, and Simplify3D. Fusion 360 adds features and fixes bugs occasionally, but mostly each update tightens the screws on what features are available on your current payment plan. Simplify3D seems totally dead, I'd be surprised if they have any employees. Datagrip has a few updates a year, and they are things like "we fixed a bug when talking to some database you've never heard of via two tin cans connected with a piece of string". If you don't like a piece of software as it is right now, definitely never buy it. I do like all of those things, but they have definitely not discovered some sort of toolchain-based productivity miracle.)

101008 5y ago

> to implement the latest kalefedhipster.js framework that doesn't actually provide significant additional functionality beyond what we had in 2015 if not 2005. Amen. How I miss old plain HTML websites.

jrockway 5y ago
I mean, if we only had plain old HTML for websites, all these people writing web applications would just be writing desktop applications. The complexity of the problems being solved wouldn't change, and it would basically be the same hell of large projects being done by large teams with little in the way of planning. The main difference would be that nothing would run on OS X or Linux, because it would be too costly to support. Microsoft would have 99.9% of the OS market, and it would cost $300 a month to have a license. (Remember when you couldn't do online banking on Linux because they all used ActiveX? I remember.) Basically, the field of software engineering wouldn't be any different. There would be different winners and we probably wouldn't have phones. But you'd still be using slow, confusing, crappy UIs, because that is the human condition. The programming language / platform wouldn't change any of that.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  > all these people writing web applications would just be writing desktop applications Good. > The complexity of the problems being solved wouldn't change, and it would basically be the same hell of large projects being done by large teams with little in the way of planning. That's a non sequitur... The complexity largely hasn't changed, it's been hidden by layers upon layers of libraries that aren't fully understood by the people building with them, even within the same company who built the library, and increasing levels of bloat. If it weren't for the never-ending pace of "marketing says we need a new UI" bugs might actually get fixed once in a while. Imagine if people went from "we need shared libraries for disk and memory efficiency" to "we need completely separate environments for every module of our program" in 20 years. Oh wait, that happened.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    There are plenty of non-web desktop apps that also never release any features, and whose engineers use the time saved from not dealing with "npm has found 600 security vulnerabilities that you can't update" to migrate their build system from Makefiles to Bazel or whatever. It's all the same -- the human race as a whole doesn't know how to deliver features with high velocity beyond a certain scale. The proprietary desktop apps I use basically get updated every few months with what seems like about a day's worth of work for one engineer. (I use Fusion 360, which might actually be a web app in desktop clothing, Datagrip, and Simplify3D. Fusion 360 adds features and fixes bugs occasionally, but mostly each update tightens the screws on what features are available on your current payment plan. Simplify3D seems totally dead, I'd be surprised if they have any employees. Datagrip has a few updates a year, and they are things like "we fixed a bug when talking to some database you've never heard of via two tin cans connected with a piece of string". If you don't like a piece of software as it is right now, definitely never buy it. I do like all of those things, but they have definitely not discovered some sort of toolchain-based productivity miracle.)