8 ms·

There's something infuriatingly help-vampirish about asking any question of the form "why don't you do x?". The pithy answer is because of all the things in th

There's something infuriatingly help-vampirish about asking any question of the form "why don't you do x?". The pithy answer is because of all the things in the world that someone might propose need doing, I can only do a vanishingly tiny fraction of them. Even the largest, most profitable company in the world can only do a slightly larger tiny fraction of them. The reason we don't do the things you ask about is because we are focused on doing the things which we've prioritized using our best judgement. The idea that we somehow owe an explanation to internet randos about everything we don't do is indicative of a personality that must not be allowed anywhere near engineers with work to do.

gkop 5y ago
Infuriating indeed. It’s not just internet randos though, it’s also (for example) engineering executives lacking in self awareness.
- tapas73 5y ago
  Internet randos, executives. Next in line should be fellow programmers "Why the f should I tell you my reasons, if you are competent programmer you should allready know everything".
edgyquant 5y ago
I’ve asked other engineers a question in this manner, but I was genuinely curious. E.g. why did you implement this this way etc.
tchalla 5y ago
Honestly, I have learnt to reply with we think Y was the best option to bring the discussion back on track. In the case where the person insists to try X, I ask them - How would you do it? More often than not, the conversation ends there. If not, I ask the to make a proposal and convince the team to do X. The question of that form is akin to “proving a negative”
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Yup, counter questions are effective, like "why do you think Y would have been better?"
- Kye 5y ago
  The tech equivalent to "a wizard did it." Sometimes the only way forward is to match the answer to the depth of the question.
renewiltord 5y ago
For internet randos, this is true. For coworkers, this is useful. There are times where technology outside has outpaced internal tech. For instance, there was a time where a company I worked at implemented MapReduce before it was available as Hadoop, where we had a k-v store more performant than others before a nice one was available with the props we wanted, where we had an internal partitioning tool to enable efficient joins before one was available; and each time outside technology outpaced us and someone asking "Why don't we just" was right. Personally, I always get that feeling of fright plus eagerness. "Oh god, have we wasted our time" plus "Oh man, can we save so much more?". And you only have to explain to coworkers once anyway. They'll either demonstrate their idea is better or turn into additional broadcasters for the viewpoint.
Thorentis 5y ago
Disagree. I regularly ask something like "explain why this is better than x" or "why shouldn't we use x instead?". I'm not asking because I think x is better. I'm asking because it's interesting to hear the reasons a potentially more senior engineer gives, which then helps me learn more about their decision making process. And in some situations it may open a discussion about other things we haven't considered. I think the premise of the article is dealing more with random drive-by comments where the person is really just advertising x, rather than being genuinely curious.
pitacracker 5y ago
Or worse: “Why don’t you just x?”
- hobs 5y ago
  I respond with "Why dont you just send me a pull request?"
fishtoaster 5y ago
I'm surprised at the ire around this question. "Why don't you do X" is a great way to understand why someone did Y. A perfectly valid answer might be "X might be better, but Y is fine and it's not the highest priority at the moment." Or the answer might be any of the dozens Brendan Gregg gave (including "for reasons I can't disclose."). Any of these answers might be illuminating to the asker. Now, admittedly, it's very tone dependent. "Why don't you X" can be asked humbly and with a truly inquisitive tone, or with a sneering tone whose obvious implication is that you must be either ignorant of X or too dumb to see its merits. But in writing, at least, I try to infer the more charitable attitude of genuine curiosity.
- burntsushi 5y ago
  This is why I try to never ask "why don't you do X" without making it clear that I'm using it as a forcing function to satisfy my own curiosity, rather than trying to sneer at folks. Often this requires being a bit more verbose, but I've personally always found a bare "why don't you do X?" without any other context to come across as sneering. But yes, I also try to interpret it charitably as well too. I just also try to make my own curiosity clear on the flip side.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    I've known a couple people who characterize others as getting upset for no reason/escalating a situation and I wonder if they were participating in the same conversation I was witnessing? Like seriously, you started it. Plenty of reason to be had. There's a whole thing called nonviolent communication and the basic premise is that if you spin someone up by choosing your words poorly, that's as much on you as it is on them.
    - switchbak 5y ago
      NVC is important, but I like to view it as "reducing the likelihood of inspiring defensiveness". It's definitely a two way street, and the skillfulness with which I communicate is definitely on me, and affects a dynamic. That said, sometimes even the most skilled communicator might find themselves spining someone up despite their best efforts. At the end of the day all we have is self awareness and good intent, but if the other person is hell bent on being oppositional, that's gonna be very hard to navigate.
manigandham 5y ago
You don't need to explain to "internet randos", and nobody expects you to. Public posts though will obviously get public commentary. However it's a great question to understand why certain decisions were made. The best engineers know that most of the work gets done in the planning and decision-making, not by stubbornly diving into something. If it was really the best decision at the time then the merits should stand the test, otherwise the defensiveness to answer is far more suspect than an innocent question.
- dasil003 5y ago
  You're missing the point. Asking why you did something is a reasonable question. Asking why you did not do something tends know-it-all and/or help-vampire territory.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    Why you didn't do something is a completely valid question and often requires much more awareness (that it exists) and introspection (of how it fits) to figure why it wasn't the best choice. Instead of assuming the asker is a "know-it-all", what if they actually do know more? I've learned more from counter arguments (both hearing and making them) in all aspects of engineering and life in general. I'll never turn down such a question and actively engage them because it makes me aware of alternatives at the very least, and often helps in future decisions. There are plenty of stories posted on HN of poor decisions that probably could've been avoided if someone considered some alternatives.
    - Kye 5y ago
      Actually engaging with people who ask this question has never led to anything other than getting mired in batting back their own choices presented as obviously better than my choices. "Why don't you use Reaper?" "Why not Bitwig?" "Why not Linux?" "Why not Ardour?" "Why not LMMS?" (the answer is "I spent tens to thousands of hours in each and they all feel like a regression next to Ableton Live and my very stable and productive Windows 11 Pro install") This is music, but from this thread it sounds like it's the case with most fields. It's always the Standard Alternative Suggestions that assume the askee is an absolute novice who wouldn't be aware of and wouldn't have extensive experience trying or at least considering the entire space of possibilities before settling on a path. "Why do you assume the asker is a know-it-all?" Experience. It's cool that you have a different experience where it's not a waste of time.
lumost 5y ago
I once worked in a department of a fortune 50 which did not have seemingly any need to produce profit or in practice ship any software. Every design came down to debating why don't you do x, for every value of x that the team could come up with. This lead to the pathological condition whereby adding engineers to the team slowed progress, as it simply created more values for x.
- uluyol 5y ago
  "Not worth it, at least right now" is a perfectly valid answer to this question. Before doing X, someone needs to estimate the benefits of doing it / the costs of not doing it. If there's no clear reason to do X, but there are clear reasons to do Y, then forget X and do Y. If things change and a reason for X appears, then you do X.
  - lumost 5y ago
    Not worth it, at least right now according to what metric? This can be interpreted as a dismissive answer to a colleague. It also presumes that the owner of the project has both full autonomy over the implementation, outcome and the perception of the outcome. If you piss off enough people over the course of a 6 month to a year project, it's unlikely that the perception of even a game changing win will be positive. As most large companies base promotions off of feedback, pissing off the wrong people will also block development. When you see tenured members of a team exhibiting certain behaviors, it's often due to those behaviors optimally solving for the incentives of the organization.
- hbrav 5y ago
  Perhaps a previously un-noticed reason for Brooks' Law being true...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

gkop 5y ago

Infuriating indeed. It’s not just internet randos though, it’s also (for example) engineering executives lacking in self awareness.

tapas73 5y ago
Internet randos, executives. Next in line should be fellow programmers "Why the f should I tell you my reasons, if you are competent programmer you should allready know everything".

edgyquant 5y ago

I’ve asked other engineers a question in this manner, but I was genuinely curious. E.g. why did you implement this this way etc.

tchalla 5y ago

Honestly, I have learnt to reply with we think Y was the best option to bring the discussion back on track. In the case where the person insists to try X, I ask them - How would you do it? More often than not, the conversation ends there. If not, I ask the to make a proposal and convince the team to do X. The question of that form is akin to “proving a negative”

hutzlibu 5y ago
Yup, counter questions are effective, like "why do you think Y would have been better?"
Kye 5y ago
The tech equivalent to "a wizard did it." Sometimes the only way forward is to match the answer to the depth of the question.

renewiltord 5y ago

For internet randos, this is true. For coworkers, this is useful. There are times where technology outside has outpaced internal tech. For instance, there was a time where a company I worked at implemented MapReduce before it was available as Hadoop, where we had a k-v store more performant than others before a nice one was available with the props we wanted, where we had an internal partitioning tool to enable efficient joins before one was available; and each time outside technology outpaced us and someone asking "Why don't we just" was right. Personally, I always get that feeling of fright plus eagerness. "Oh god, have we wasted our time" plus "Oh man, can we save so much more?". And you only have to explain to coworkers once anyway. They'll either demonstrate their idea is better or turn into additional broadcasters for the viewpoint.

Thorentis 5y ago

Disagree. I regularly ask something like "explain why this is better than x" or "why shouldn't we use x instead?". I'm not asking because I think x is better. I'm asking because it's interesting to hear the reasons a potentially more senior engineer gives, which then helps me learn more about their decision making process. And in some situations it may open a discussion about other things we haven't considered. I think the premise of the article is dealing more with random drive-by comments where the person is really just advertising x, rather than being genuinely curious.

pitacracker 5y ago

Or worse: “Why don’t you just x?”

hobs 5y ago
I respond with "Why dont you just send me a pull request?"

fishtoaster 5y ago

I'm surprised at the ire around this question. "Why don't you do X" is a great way to understand why someone did Y. A perfectly valid answer might be "X might be better, but Y is fine and it's not the highest priority at the moment." Or the answer might be any of the dozens Brendan Gregg gave (including "for reasons I can't disclose."). Any of these answers might be illuminating to the asker. Now, admittedly, it's very tone dependent. "Why don't you X" can be asked humbly and with a truly inquisitive tone, or with a sneering tone whose obvious implication is that you must be either ignorant of X or too dumb to see its merits. But in writing, at least, I try to infer the more charitable attitude of genuine curiosity.

burntsushi 5y ago
This is why I try to never ask "why don't you do X" without making it clear that I'm using it as a forcing function to satisfy my own curiosity, rather than trying to sneer at folks. Often this requires being a bit more verbose, but I've personally always found a bare "why don't you do X?" without any other context to come across as sneering. But yes, I also try to interpret it charitably as well too. I just also try to make my own curiosity clear on the flip side.
- hinkley 5y ago
  I've known a couple people who characterize others as getting upset for no reason/escalating a situation and I wonder if they were participating in the same conversation I was witnessing? Like seriously, you started it. Plenty of reason to be had. There's a whole thing called nonviolent communication and the basic premise is that if you spin someone up by choosing your words poorly, that's as much on you as it is on them.
  - switchbak 5y ago
    NVC is important, but I like to view it as "reducing the likelihood of inspiring defensiveness". It's definitely a two way street, and the skillfulness with which I communicate is definitely on me, and affects a dynamic. That said, sometimes even the most skilled communicator might find themselves spining someone up despite their best efforts. At the end of the day all we have is self awareness and good intent, but if the other person is hell bent on being oppositional, that's gonna be very hard to navigate.

manigandham 5y ago

You don't need to explain to "internet randos", and nobody expects you to. Public posts though will obviously get public commentary. However it's a great question to understand why certain decisions were made. The best engineers know that most of the work gets done in the planning and decision-making, not by stubbornly diving into something. If it was really the best decision at the time then the merits should stand the test, otherwise the defensiveness to answer is far more suspect than an innocent question.

dasil003 5y ago
You're missing the point. Asking why you did something is a reasonable question. Asking why you did not do something tends know-it-all and/or help-vampire territory.
- manigandham 5y ago
  Why you didn't do something is a completely valid question and often requires much more awareness (that it exists) and introspection (of how it fits) to figure why it wasn't the best choice. Instead of assuming the asker is a "know-it-all", what if they actually do know more? I've learned more from counter arguments (both hearing and making them) in all aspects of engineering and life in general. I'll never turn down such a question and actively engage them because it makes me aware of alternatives at the very least, and often helps in future decisions. There are plenty of stories posted on HN of poor decisions that probably could've been avoided if someone considered some alternatives.
  - Kye 5y ago
    Actually engaging with people who ask this question has never led to anything other than getting mired in batting back their own choices presented as obviously better than my choices. "Why don't you use Reaper?" "Why not Bitwig?" "Why not Linux?" "Why not Ardour?" "Why not LMMS?" (the answer is "I spent tens to thousands of hours in each and they all feel like a regression next to Ableton Live and my very stable and productive Windows 11 Pro install") This is music, but from this thread it sounds like it's the case with most fields. It's always the Standard Alternative Suggestions that assume the askee is an absolute novice who wouldn't be aware of and wouldn't have extensive experience trying or at least considering the entire space of possibilities before settling on a path. "Why do you assume the asker is a know-it-all?" Experience. It's cool that you have a different experience where it's not a waste of time.

lumost 5y ago

I once worked in a department of a fortune 50 which did not have seemingly any need to produce profit or in practice ship any software. Every design came down to debating why don't you do x, for every value of x that the team could come up with. This lead to the pathological condition whereby adding engineers to the team slowed progress, as it simply created more values for x.

uluyol 5y ago
"Not worth it, at least right now" is a perfectly valid answer to this question. Before doing X, someone needs to estimate the benefits of doing it / the costs of not doing it. If there's no clear reason to do X, but there are clear reasons to do Y, then forget X and do Y. If things change and a reason for X appears, then you do X.
- lumost 5y ago
  Not worth it, at least right now according to what metric? This can be interpreted as a dismissive answer to a colleague. It also presumes that the owner of the project has both full autonomy over the implementation, outcome and the perception of the outcome. If you piss off enough people over the course of a 6 month to a year project, it's unlikely that the perception of even a game changing win will be positive. As most large companies base promotions off of feedback, pissing off the wrong people will also block development. When you see tenured members of a team exhibiting certain behaviors, it's often due to those behaviors optimally solving for the incentives of the organization.
hbrav 5y ago
Perhaps a previously un-noticed reason for Brooks' Law being true...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]