9 ms·

I call this the "path to enlightenment." You have discovered that the most popular toolchain is overkill for 95% of the things its used for. The problem is tha

I call this the "path to enlightenment." You have discovered that the most popular toolchain is overkill for 95% of the things its used for. The problem is that's true literally across the board. You move to the backend and you have to deal with people who fell in love with microservices and weird databases that they didn't need. You move to ops and you have to deal with k8s when a single container would do. If you try mobile app development, let me know, I've never tried but I doubt it's exempt. Why does this happen? No idea, but it's not lost on me that a lot of these things are backed by huge companies with giant piles of money who are using them as marketing. The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. What are we going to build? What tools make sense for it? The problem I'm running into is a lot of people expect to use React in the same way many of us once relied on jquery. So if that's the case and we must use some React, what can I do to use it in the simplest and clearest way possible?

mpweiher 4y ago
> If you try mobile app development, let me know, I've never tried but I doubt it's exempt It's just as bad. Different, but bad.
eternalban 4y ago
> Why does this happen? These teams lack technical leadership that is based on professional experience. This is the sort of lesson that is acquired after at least 10 if not more years of professional work, however the industry tests for algorithmic performance art on whiteboards to select software engineers.
CM30 4y ago
In addition to what the other commenter says about wanting to postpone the 'creative' aspect of the work, I'd also say this happens because of: 1. Boredom. Everyone wants to be doing interesting work, and doing the same thing that's been done a million times before is probably pretty dull. Devs don't want to feel like code monkeys piecing things together assembly line style, even if that's exactly what's needed for many sites, apps, etc. 2. CV/Resume padding. Perhaps many people see every job as a stepping stone to the next one, and hope a complex solution will get them hired at a FAANG company or fast growing startup in future. 3. Expectations. Problems at large tech companies like Google are more likely to be documented online, since the folks working there tend to have more of an online/social media/blog presence than the folks doing 9-5s at more traditional companies. So people think "hey, if this is how others are doing it, this must be the proper way to do it", ignoring the fact that it's the proper way for a company expecting X billion users a year rather than a more reasonable number. 4. Ego/online reputation. Saying you used a fancy framework and hosting setup with microservices for your project gets a lot more votes on Reddit and Hacker News than saying you used say, basic HTML and CSS. 5. Lack of training/learning opportunities at work. Companies tend not to give workers much of a chance to learn new tech or work on interesting projects in work hours, which would provide them a place to experiment with these new technologies. So they try and integrate it into their normal work instead, even if it's completely the wrong solution for the problem at hand.
schwartzworld 4y ago
> relied on jquery. So if that's the case and we must use some React, what can I do to use it in the simplest and clearest way possible? The answer to that question has been the same as long as I've been using react. Represent most of your app logic in pure functions. This has been the React team's recommendation, pretty much since the beginning. Once you get hit to the idea of making everything a function, it pays to learn some functional programming design patterns. This increases your vocabulary for abstracting your application logic into a function. Once almost everything lives in functions, your react components should really only care about managing the view.
unity1001 4y ago
> Why does this happen? We humans are creative creatures. When we are doing the same thing for a long time, we tend to get bored and make change happen. We 'improve' things, we move things about. We 'make things better'. So we are not bored anymore.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  except nothing was improved. Just changed.
kbrannigan 4y ago
Speaking of ops. What is the simplest reproducible way to accomplish this task. - create vm instance ( setup firewall, users, network dna, stuff) - install : apache, runtime - install app.
- gregjor 4y ago
  Set it up once. Snapshot an image (called an AMI on AWS, but applies on all cloud services). Use the image to make new identical instances. You can also script the process with (for example) Terraform.
  - chrismarlow9 4y ago
    Nearly every company I've ever worked for could get away with only using: - packer for images - terraform for prod infra - vagrant for local dev - pssh for ci/cd and config management And in some cases I would say they'd be far more efficient with this setup.
- nikanj 4y ago
  Heroku or alternatives
- betaby 4y ago
  create - terraform, install / manage - cfengine / ansible / chef
- aprdm 4y ago
  A single ansible yaml
- Eduard 4y ago
  All the responses you got so far suggest exactly what this "Ask HN" actually wants to avoid: Terraform, AMI, Packer, Ansible, Chef ..., the list goes on Here is my suggestion for keeping it simple, by solely relying on skills you will need anyways: git and shell scripting. - Write a shell script that executes all those commands you would run manually to set up your system. - Put up a git repository in the `/` directory, `.gitignore` everything by default, and explicitly git-notignore all those configuration files and user files/maintenance scripts which are relevant for your environment. Use githooks to also track/restore file permissions and ownerships of these tracked files.
michaelchisari 4y ago
| Why does this happen? Because nobody wants to hear "that feature isn't viable given our architecture." So we build systems that can accommodate any possible future feature. No matter how unlikely. And no matter how much extraneous complexity it adds now. In order to maintain simplicity you have to enforce simplicity. And tech business culture doesn't like that.
johnfn 4y ago
> Why does this happen? It happens because these technologies solve real problem for some subset of their users. Usually when people are saying that technology has become too complicated, it's because they happen to be looking from a perspective where the problems that the technology solves are invisible to them. That doesn't mean that the problem isn't important - it just means the problem isn't important for them. The easiest way to motivate this is to imagine the kinds of problems that need solving at large companies with thousands of employees. They look vastly different than the problems of someone like me working on a side project by myself. e.g., TypeScript might not be useful for some single-person teams of developers. It's quite useful for teams of around 5, and it's unthinkable to work without it in teams of 100+. Does this mean that the single-developer team is wrong? (I'd actually say the same thing about React. If you're a one-man team, go ahead, do whatever you want. But if you're working with 100 other engineers, god help you if you're all directly manipulating the DOM with vanilla JS.) Most "complex" technology is solving many problems for many different smallish subsets of its users at the same time. To the average bystander, it can look like the technology has gained huge amounts of unnecessary complexity, but it hasn't, not really - it's just complexity which isn't directly relevant to you. (OK, and yes, some other technology is just needlessly stupid, but...)
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  My sense is that is wrong. Case in point, I deal with a group that has a relatively elaborate set of excel workbooks to manage their process. None of the workbooks are great, all of them created and maintained by different teams, and there is persistent discussion of needing to accrue tools or some guy even threw together his own MS Access db to substitute for the workbooks. What they do is not at all beyond what Excel could handle, but it is the lack of fundamental process and methods to design a proper system that is the code and fundamentally problem. I feel that is frequently the issue, fragmentation and derivation caused by a lack of fundamental first principles thinking, willingness to tackle the issue from the ground up. The outcome is then talk of bolting on yet another tool or some fix that really only ads debt.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
hnuser847 4y ago
> The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. What are we going to build? What tools make sense for it? I tried to do this at several companies and ended up feeling like a pariah. At the end of the day, engineers, especially younger ones, like to follow trends, "learn new things", pad their resumes, and build bespoke solutions. Trying to fight against this will only make you look like a troglodyte or a party pooper.
- somehnacct3757 4y ago
  I worked at a company long enough to go from young dev who wants to use shiny new tech (and is told no by party pooper experienced devs); to the party pooper experienced dev for a new group of young devs. I know I'm right, as I'm now sure the devs telling me no were right, but I'll be pushed out same as they were. Young blood is naive and cheap and plentiful so they will always have the momentum advantage. They're the ones that promise the moon to other departments and then stay up all night covering their tracks when they were wrong.
- idlehand 4y ago
  As a younger dev I see the opposite in my corner of the world. The senior developers spend countless hours debating the best design, engineering large architectures to bounce a handful of kilobytes of information around in the just right way to achieve architectural purity. Then they do greenfield development with old tech that is simultaneously somehow both old and barely used, as if to generate their own job security.
invaliduser 4y ago
>Why does this happen? A lot of people value more enhancing their résumé than solving problems
- register 4y ago
  Simply this
- agumonkey 4y ago
  a lot of companies value shiny resume than complex problems solved
ScottStevenson 4y ago
>Why does this happen? I wrote about a hypothesis here: https://medium.com/@scott.stevenson/how-to-finally-make-something-a16c8db7ba2a https://medium.com/@scott.stevenson/how-to-finally-make-some... Most of us are scared by the ambiguity of actual creative work, so unless we are under the threat of deadline, we seek out "structured games" to play so that we can put off the anxiety of freeform work. These games are: (1) Tool Game: Researching and setting up tools (2) Learning Game: Books, podcasts, courses (3) Maintenance Game: Cleaning up our desktop, desk, house, etc. (4) Process Game: Setting up new processes and following them The knowledge that things are actually easy and straightforward means we actually need to do the creative part of the work--many people are not ready to face that knowledge.
- h4ch1 4y ago
  > (1) Tool Game: Researching and setting up tools (2) Learning Game: Books, podcasts, courses (3) Maintenance Game: Cleaning up our desktop, desk, house, etc. (4) Process Game: Setting up new processes and following them This is exactly what I have been doing for so long (~2 years), I get hyped about a new project, delve into the "best" way of solving the problem and encounter 4-5 shiny new things, spend an unreal amount of time scaffolding and using new tech to create a base framework for whatever I am doing, and then when I actually have to solve the problem my productivity stagnates and I procrastinate more. Even now I am conflicted/lost on what to do, this response is tbh a cry for help from people who have encountered something like this. Any insight would be great.
- the-printer 4y ago
  > (1) Tool Game: Researching and setting up tools (2) Learning Game: Books, podcasts, courses (3) Maintenance Game: Cleaning up our desktop, desk, house, etc. (4) Process Game: Setting up new processes and following them I…I…I am triggered by this. So it’s as if, people such as myself are on the hunt for artificial positive feedback loops that are functionally beautified masks of procrastination. Fueled by, perhaps a subconscious lack of confidence, or a sense of ignorance. Something to that effect. So now imagine an entire department, teams, organizations all suffering from this? This can explain a lot.
adrianmsmith 4y ago
> Why does this happen? A few answers already but let me add one: Complex technologies favour seniors who are capable of understanding the complexity, over juniors who might struggle more. And it's seniors who make the decisions on what technology to use, so I think it's "rational" if they (even subconsciously) make choices which benefit them. They don't want to get replaced by cheaper juniors.
- plugin-baby 4y ago
  I’ve observed the opposite - less experienced devs tend to want to use more complicated and extensive/invasive tech, without understanding if it’s appropriate or what its limitations are.
  - Chris_Newton 4y ago
    I concur. The best people often produce the simplest solutions. Or perhaps more accurately, they often produce solutions that correctly implement the essential complexity but with little accidental complexity added.
tomg 4y ago
> Why does this happen? No idea, but it's not lost on me that a lot of these things are backed by huge companies with giant piles of money who are using them as marketing. Your whole post is spot-on :) My two cents on the answer to this question: - New tools / frameworks / libraries / etc often position themselves as “solving” some perceived deficiency of the prior generation of that thing. So it can be attractive to want to move over to something that solves a pain point. (Whether it actually does, or whether it just replaces it with a new pain point is another thing…) Monolith to microservices is an example. - At least for me, if I’m starting a new project (especially if it’s in a space I’m not that experienced in), it’s tempting to choose what looks to be the simplest choice, which could be for example a niche database technology suited for my exact need (even if in reality a regular SQL db would be just fine). - Engineers like to play with new toys!
Buttons840 4y ago
> The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. You can also learn to leave work at work. Keep your side projects simple, if you have any. And rest easy knowing that at work the efforts of one person, you, create enough maintenance work for two people; enjoy that job security.
deltasevennine 4y ago
>Why does this happen? I highly disagree with everyone else. This is the answer why: Because there's no clear or definitive answer to What's best the "best" architecture or system for building these things. The entire industry is full of people making up stuff without anyone truly knowing anything. For the shortest distance between two points we can calculate an answer. there's a definitive optimum. The question of what's the best web service is infinitely more complex. The inputs are huge in number and even the definition of "best" is complex and hard to define... So in short we essentially have no mathematical theory for software design and technology that can help us define what is "best." It's the same problem they have in Art and Design. So nobody actually knows what is better BUT they think they know so they build wrappers around bad technology or they build completely new frameworks NONE of which actually provably move the needle forward. In fact the needle can move backwards and nobody knows! When something can't be calculated, it's "Designed." This is the difference between "design" and calculation. Anything that's designed is basically some human wandering around in an area almost aimlessly without ever truly knowing what is optimum. They just use their gut and find some sort of answer that somewhat works. This is the current and past state of the programming industry. That is why on some intuitive level we can see that a lot of the industry looks like it's moving backwards. Let's say we do have an equation that can take all the components that go into web application development and give you a numerical rating on how good it is. If we had such a model, my best guess is that if we took a system from the past and compared it to a system now, the Modern system will actually have a LOWER numerical rating. But that's just my guess. As of now, nobody can truly define what that numerical rating represents and nobody knows whether some new framework or design methodology actually increases the amount of points. We are doomed forever to exist in this endless design loop until someone finds a mathematical model that can prove and layout the big picture from a quantitative perspective.
noduerme 4y ago
I just still use jQuery or vanilla typescript when building frontends. To me it's so much more readable, and I almost never have to worry about newer code not playing well with older code. No client has ever even asked me what framework was being used. If the software works and the code is well documented, the fewer frameworks you use the better.
tejtm 4y ago
In scientific/academic environments (the only type I can speak of) I have sometimes wondered if my fellow computerists have complexity envy. What we need to do is not that complicated but making it so distracts from understanding the harder problem at hand while appearing to be working furiously.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  This is basically the technical equivalent of bikeshedding, which has been known for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
It happens because everyone wants to imagine they're smart and just happen to work for a no name company. The intelligence is in the end result of the engineering, but no one wants their work to be so simple it could have been done by a junior.
zackees 4y ago
hsn915 4y ago
> Why does this happen I wrote up my hypothesis here: https://hasen.substack.com/i/52275953/why-the-situation-persists https://hasen.substack.com/i/52275953/why-the-situation-pers... Basically, programmers love complexity. If they can't solve real problems, they will create fake problems so they can solve them. They might not realize that's what they're doing. Programmers love solving puzzles. It's why they program. The problem arises when they can't solve the real puzzle due to lack of experience (and lack of skill which comes from lack of practice), they solve secondary and tertiary puzzles that contribute nothing to the real problem at hand. Instead of "How can I write 1000 lines of code to solve this problem?" they opt for "how can I configure these 20 libraries and glue them together so that a solution to the problem emerges from their interaction?"
- mmgutz 4y ago
  I'm guilty. > "How can I write 1000 lines of code to solve this problem?" I opt for "Why are these libraries so complicated? I'll research all 20 libraries and take the parts I like and build a newer, simpler framework."
- hsn915 4y ago
  I should also add that people who advocate for simplicity primarily do so because they want to solve bigger / more complicated problems, but the complexity level gets in their way. People who don't see the existing solutions as overly complex are content to stay at their current level and have no vision of solving bigger more difficult problems. They think they are already working at or near the peak of human possibility.
dominotw 4y ago
> The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. This can seriously limit your earning potential by limiting your career advancement. You are forced to create complexity monsters for promotions at the type companies I've worked at.
ksec 4y ago
>Why does this happen? No idea, but it's not lost on me that a lot of these things are backed by huge companies with giant piles of money who are using them as marketing. 1. New Tools, in the modern era means Promotion, VCs, Money, Prestige. personal branding. 2. Creating complexity, in the name of needs for these Big Tech is a great way to create a moat for themselves. 3. Ideology, web development is possibly the 2nd worst places if it wasn't for Rust evangelism strike force. The idea that every single god damn thing should be in Javascript or SPA. 4. The Act of design before coding is gone. Especially in the era of Web Development. Lead by Google and Facebook which later spread across Silicon Valley and later across the world. An Act which is even seen as evil or forbidden.

mpweiher 4y ago

> If you try mobile app development, let me know, I've never tried but I doubt it's exempt It's just as bad. Different, but bad.

eternalban 4y ago

> Why does this happen? These teams lack technical leadership that is based on professional experience. This is the sort of lesson that is acquired after at least 10 if not more years of professional work, however the industry tests for algorithmic performance art on whiteboards to select software engineers.

CM30 4y ago

In addition to what the other commenter says about wanting to postpone the 'creative' aspect of the work, I'd also say this happens because of: 1. Boredom. Everyone wants to be doing interesting work, and doing the same thing that's been done a million times before is probably pretty dull. Devs don't want to feel like code monkeys piecing things together assembly line style, even if that's exactly what's needed for many sites, apps, etc. 2. CV/Resume padding. Perhaps many people see every job as a stepping stone to the next one, and hope a complex solution will get them hired at a FAANG company or fast growing startup in future. 3. Expectations. Problems at large tech companies like Google are more likely to be documented online, since the folks working there tend to have more of an online/social media/blog presence than the folks doing 9-5s at more traditional companies. So people think "hey, if this is how others are doing it, this must be the proper way to do it", ignoring the fact that it's the proper way for a company expecting X billion users a year rather than a more reasonable number. 4. Ego/online reputation. Saying you used a fancy framework and hosting setup with microservices for your project gets a lot more votes on Reddit and Hacker News than saying you used say, basic HTML and CSS. 5. Lack of training/learning opportunities at work. Companies tend not to give workers much of a chance to learn new tech or work on interesting projects in work hours, which would provide them a place to experiment with these new technologies. So they try and integrate it into their normal work instead, even if it's completely the wrong solution for the problem at hand.

schwartzworld 4y ago

> relied on jquery. So if that's the case and we must use some React, what can I do to use it in the simplest and clearest way possible? The answer to that question has been the same as long as I've been using react. Represent most of your app logic in pure functions. This has been the React team's recommendation, pretty much since the beginning. Once you get hit to the idea of making everything a function, it pays to learn some functional programming design patterns. This increases your vocabulary for abstracting your application logic into a function. Once almost everything lives in functions, your react components should really only care about managing the view.

unity1001 4y ago

> Why does this happen? We humans are creative creatures. When we are doing the same thing for a long time, we tend to get bored and make change happen. We 'improve' things, we move things about. We 'make things better'. So we are not bored anymore.

deltasevennine 4y ago
except nothing was improved. Just changed.

kbrannigan 4y ago

Speaking of ops. What is the simplest reproducible way to accomplish this task. - create vm instance ( setup firewall, users, network dna, stuff) - install : apache, runtime - install app.

gregjor 4y ago
Set it up once. Snapshot an image (called an AMI on AWS, but applies on all cloud services). Use the image to make new identical instances. You can also script the process with (for example) Terraform.
- chrismarlow9 4y ago
  Nearly every company I've ever worked for could get away with only using: - packer for images - terraform for prod infra - vagrant for local dev - pssh for ci/cd and config management And in some cases I would say they'd be far more efficient with this setup.
nikanj 4y ago
Heroku or alternatives
betaby 4y ago
create - terraform, install / manage - cfengine / ansible / chef
aprdm 4y ago
A single ansible yaml
Eduard 4y ago
All the responses you got so far suggest exactly what this "Ask HN" actually wants to avoid: Terraform, AMI, Packer, Ansible, Chef ..., the list goes on Here is my suggestion for keeping it simple, by solely relying on skills you will need anyways: git and shell scripting. - Write a shell script that executes all those commands you would run manually to set up your system. - Put up a git repository in the `/` directory, `.gitignore` everything by default, and explicitly git-notignore all those configuration files and user files/maintenance scripts which are relevant for your environment. Use githooks to also track/restore file permissions and ownerships of these tracked files.

michaelchisari 4y ago

| Why does this happen? Because nobody wants to hear "that feature isn't viable given our architecture." So we build systems that can accommodate any possible future feature. No matter how unlikely. And no matter how much extraneous complexity it adds now. In order to maintain simplicity you have to enforce simplicity. And tech business culture doesn't like that.

johnfn 4y ago

> Why does this happen? It happens because these technologies solve real problem for some subset of their users. Usually when people are saying that technology has become too complicated, it's because they happen to be looking from a perspective where the problems that the technology solves are invisible to them. That doesn't mean that the problem isn't important - it just means the problem isn't important for them. The easiest way to motivate this is to imagine the kinds of problems that need solving at large companies with thousands of employees. They look vastly different than the problems of someone like me working on a side project by myself. e.g., TypeScript might not be useful for some single-person teams of developers. It's quite useful for teams of around 5, and it's unthinkable to work without it in teams of 100+. Does this mean that the single-developer team is wrong? (I'd actually say the same thing about React. If you're a one-man team, go ahead, do whatever you want. But if you're working with 100 other engineers, god help you if you're all directly manipulating the DOM with vanilla JS.) Most "complex" technology is solving many problems for many different smallish subsets of its users at the same time. To the average bystander, it can look like the technology has gained huge amounts of unnecessary complexity, but it hasn't, not really - it's just complexity which isn't directly relevant to you. (OK, and yes, some other technology is just needlessly stupid, but...)

frankfrankfrank 4y ago
My sense is that is wrong. Case in point, I deal with a group that has a relatively elaborate set of excel workbooks to manage their process. None of the workbooks are great, all of them created and maintained by different teams, and there is persistent discussion of needing to accrue tools or some guy even threw together his own MS Access db to substitute for the workbooks. What they do is not at all beyond what Excel could handle, but it is the lack of fundamental process and methods to design a proper system that is the code and fundamentally problem. I feel that is frequently the issue, fragmentation and derivation caused by a lack of fundamental first principles thinking, willingness to tackle the issue from the ground up. The outcome is then talk of bolting on yet another tool or some fix that really only ads debt.
- bobthepanda 4y ago

hnuser847 4y ago

> The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. What are we going to build? What tools make sense for it? I tried to do this at several companies and ended up feeling like a pariah. At the end of the day, engineers, especially younger ones, like to follow trends, "learn new things", pad their resumes, and build bespoke solutions. Trying to fight against this will only make you look like a troglodyte or a party pooper.

somehnacct3757 4y ago
I worked at a company long enough to go from young dev who wants to use shiny new tech (and is told no by party pooper experienced devs); to the party pooper experienced dev for a new group of young devs. I know I'm right, as I'm now sure the devs telling me no were right, but I'll be pushed out same as they were. Young blood is naive and cheap and plentiful so they will always have the momentum advantage. They're the ones that promise the moon to other departments and then stay up all night covering their tracks when they were wrong.
idlehand 4y ago
As a younger dev I see the opposite in my corner of the world. The senior developers spend countless hours debating the best design, engineering large architectures to bounce a handful of kilobytes of information around in the just right way to achieve architectural purity. Then they do greenfield development with old tech that is simultaneously somehow both old and barely used, as if to generate their own job security.

invaliduser 4y ago

>Why does this happen? A lot of people value more enhancing their résumé than solving problems

register 4y ago
Simply this
agumonkey 4y ago
a lot of companies value shiny resume than complex problems solved

ScottStevenson 4y ago

>Why does this happen? I wrote about a hypothesis here: https://medium.com/@scott.stevenson/how-to-finally-make-something-a16c8db7ba2a https://medium.com/@scott.stevenson/how-to-finally-make-some... Most of us are scared by the ambiguity of actual creative work, so unless we are under the threat of deadline, we seek out "structured games" to play so that we can put off the anxiety of freeform work. These games are: (1) Tool Game: Researching and setting up tools (2) Learning Game: Books, podcasts, courses (3) Maintenance Game: Cleaning up our desktop, desk, house, etc. (4) Process Game: Setting up new processes and following them The knowledge that things are actually easy and straightforward means we actually need to do the creative part of the work--many people are not ready to face that knowledge.

h4ch1 4y ago
> (1) Tool Game: Researching and setting up tools (2) Learning Game: Books, podcasts, courses (3) Maintenance Game: Cleaning up our desktop, desk, house, etc. (4) Process Game: Setting up new processes and following them This is exactly what I have been doing for so long (~2 years), I get hyped about a new project, delve into the "best" way of solving the problem and encounter 4-5 shiny new things, spend an unreal amount of time scaffolding and using new tech to create a base framework for whatever I am doing, and then when I actually have to solve the problem my productivity stagnates and I procrastinate more. Even now I am conflicted/lost on what to do, this response is tbh a cry for help from people who have encountered something like this. Any insight would be great.
the-printer 4y ago
> (1) Tool Game: Researching and setting up tools (2) Learning Game: Books, podcasts, courses (3) Maintenance Game: Cleaning up our desktop, desk, house, etc. (4) Process Game: Setting up new processes and following them I…I…I am triggered by this. So it’s as if, people such as myself are on the hunt for artificial positive feedback loops that are functionally beautified masks of procrastination. Fueled by, perhaps a subconscious lack of confidence, or a sense of ignorance. Something to that effect. So now imagine an entire department, teams, organizations all suffering from this? This can explain a lot.

adrianmsmith 4y ago

> Why does this happen? A few answers already but let me add one: Complex technologies favour seniors who are capable of understanding the complexity, over juniors who might struggle more. And it's seniors who make the decisions on what technology to use, so I think it's "rational" if they (even subconsciously) make choices which benefit them. They don't want to get replaced by cheaper juniors.

plugin-baby 4y ago
I’ve observed the opposite - less experienced devs tend to want to use more complicated and extensive/invasive tech, without understanding if it’s appropriate or what its limitations are.
- Chris_Newton 4y ago
  I concur. The best people often produce the simplest solutions. Or perhaps more accurately, they often produce solutions that correctly implement the essential complexity but with little accidental complexity added.

tomg 4y ago

> Why does this happen? No idea, but it's not lost on me that a lot of these things are backed by huge companies with giant piles of money who are using them as marketing. Your whole post is spot-on :) My two cents on the answer to this question: - New tools / frameworks / libraries / etc often position themselves as “solving” some perceived deficiency of the prior generation of that thing. So it can be attractive to want to move over to something that solves a pain point. (Whether it actually does, or whether it just replaces it with a new pain point is another thing…) Monolith to microservices is an example. - At least for me, if I’m starting a new project (especially if it’s in a space I’m not that experienced in), it’s tempting to choose what looks to be the simplest choice, which could be for example a niche database technology suited for my exact need (even if in reality a regular SQL db would be just fine). - Engineers like to play with new toys!

Buttons840 4y ago

> The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. You can also learn to leave work at work. Keep your side projects simple, if you have any. And rest easy knowing that at work the efforts of one person, you, create enough maintenance work for two people; enjoy that job security.

deltasevennine 4y ago

>Why does this happen? I highly disagree with everyone else. This is the answer why: Because there's no clear or definitive answer to What's best the "best" architecture or system for building these things. The entire industry is full of people making up stuff without anyone truly knowing anything. For the shortest distance between two points we can calculate an answer. there's a definitive optimum. The question of what's the best web service is infinitely more complex. The inputs are huge in number and even the definition of "best" is complex and hard to define... So in short we essentially have no mathematical theory for software design and technology that can help us define what is "best." It's the same problem they have in Art and Design. So nobody actually knows what is better BUT they think they know so they build wrappers around bad technology or they build completely new frameworks NONE of which actually provably move the needle forward. In fact the needle can move backwards and nobody knows! When something can't be calculated, it's "Designed." This is the difference between "design" and calculation. Anything that's designed is basically some human wandering around in an area almost aimlessly without ever truly knowing what is optimum. They just use their gut and find some sort of answer that somewhat works. This is the current and past state of the programming industry. That is why on some intuitive level we can see that a lot of the industry looks like it's moving backwards. Let's say we do have an equation that can take all the components that go into web application development and give you a numerical rating on how good it is. If we had such a model, my best guess is that if we took a system from the past and compared it to a system now, the Modern system will actually have a LOWER numerical rating. But that's just my guess. As of now, nobody can truly define what that numerical rating represents and nobody knows whether some new framework or design methodology actually increases the amount of points. We are doomed forever to exist in this endless design loop until someone finds a mathematical model that can prove and layout the big picture from a quantitative perspective.

noduerme 4y ago

I just still use jQuery or vanilla typescript when building frontends. To me it's so much more readable, and I almost never have to worry about newer code not playing well with older code. No client has ever even asked me what framework was being used. If the software works and the code is well documented, the fewer frameworks you use the better.

tejtm 4y ago

In scientific/academic environments (the only type I can speak of) I have sometimes wondered if my fellow computerists have complexity envy. What we need to do is not that complicated but making it so distracts from understanding the harder problem at hand while appearing to be working furiously.

bobthepanda 4y ago
This is basically the technical equivalent of bikeshedding, which has been known for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

It happens because everyone wants to imagine they're smart and just happen to work for a no name company. The intelligence is in the end result of the engineering, but no one wants their work to be so simple it could have been done by a junior.

zackees 4y ago

hsn915 4y ago

> Why does this happen I wrote up my hypothesis here: https://hasen.substack.com/i/52275953/why-the-situation-persists https://hasen.substack.com/i/52275953/why-the-situation-pers... Basically, programmers love complexity. If they can't solve real problems, they will create fake problems so they can solve them. They might not realize that's what they're doing. Programmers love solving puzzles. It's why they program. The problem arises when they can't solve the real puzzle due to lack of experience (and lack of skill which comes from lack of practice), they solve secondary and tertiary puzzles that contribute nothing to the real problem at hand. Instead of "How can I write 1000 lines of code to solve this problem?" they opt for "how can I configure these 20 libraries and glue them together so that a solution to the problem emerges from their interaction?"

mmgutz 4y ago
I'm guilty. > "How can I write 1000 lines of code to solve this problem?" I opt for "Why are these libraries so complicated? I'll research all 20 libraries and take the parts I like and build a newer, simpler framework."
hsn915 4y ago
I should also add that people who advocate for simplicity primarily do so because they want to solve bigger / more complicated problems, but the complexity level gets in their way. People who don't see the existing solutions as overly complex are content to stay at their current level and have no vision of solving bigger more difficult problems. They think they are already working at or near the peak of human possibility.

dominotw 4y ago

> The only thing you can do (besides leave it all behind and open a taqueria) is be a voice for simplicity. This can seriously limit your earning potential by limiting your career advancement. You are forced to create complexity monsters for promotions at the type companies I've worked at.

ksec 4y ago

>Why does this happen? No idea, but it's not lost on me that a lot of these things are backed by huge companies with giant piles of money who are using them as marketing. 1. New Tools, in the modern era means Promotion, VCs, Money, Prestige. personal branding. 2. Creating complexity, in the name of needs for these Big Tech is a great way to create a moat for themselves. 3. Ideology, web development is possibly the 2nd worst places if it wasn't for Rust evangelism strike force. The idea that every single god damn thing should be in Javascript or SPA. 4. The Act of design before coding is gone. Especially in the era of Web Development. Lead by Google and Facebook which later spread across Silicon Valley and later across the world. An Act which is even seen as evil or forbidden.