6 ms·

This whole comment reads so weird. Why do you or anyone else care how complicated someone else’s architecture is? Why is it only “OK” if it’s an educational exe

This whole comment reads so weird. Why do you or anyone else care how complicated someone else’s architecture is? Why is it only “OK” if it’s an educational exercise? Are you going to be maintaining it? Are you going to even be using it? Why does it matter to you what someone else did in their spare time for their own amusement? Or even to make a commercial product out of it? Either way, it’s not your architecture to backseat architect, let people do what they want.

capableweb 4y ago
I think I already elaborated on why? A bunch of people take information they come across on the internet and think that's the only way of doing things, so if someone comes across the post, looks at the architecture they might think building it with so many components is a required thing, not just optional for really big projects. I'm personally dealing with infrastructure at loads of different places, and the amount of engineers who over-complicate their infrastructure pains me, they all go for a distributed architecture before the products they are building even have any users, because they've read bunch of blog posts about building it that way. It sucks to spend so much time and effort on maintaining and improving something when it's not really needed in the first place. Like using a Ferrari to deliver food in a traffic-heavy city, instead of just having a moped. So basically, I want to save myself and others time.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  Gotta love gate keeping architecture in the interest of “saving others time”. If someone takes one look at one project and decides to copy it’s architecture word for word, then it’s on them. Not on the person who built an open source project, for whatever reason, and put it out there for the world. It’s not your architecture to architect. If you want to build your own service to show best practices, then go for it. You weren’t there to make decisions, you don’t know of the reasoning behind them, and it seems ludicrous to backseat architect with context, let alone without any amount of it.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I don't know what your expertise is exactly, but if someone new in your subject area intentionally made things more complicated than necessary for the scope of the project and publish it as a public resource for others to take inspiration from and learn from, wouldn't you at least have some sort reaction against it? See it as wanting to advance my own trade by providing opinion on the current "everything should be a serverless function" trends in the hope of hopefully be able to move the trade into a different direction.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      > I don't know what your expertise is exactly, but if someone new in your subject area intentionally made things more complicated than necessary for the scope of the project and publish it as a public resource for others to take inspiration from and learn from, wouldn't you at least have some sort reaction against it? If I have no affiliation, or plan to affiliate with a project, why would I give a shit about what they do? It’s their project to figure out. Did they ask you for an architecture review? No. Then don’t backseat architect. It’s as simple as that. Especially when your critique is “you’re doing it all wrong and you should feel bad if it’s not an educational exercise”.
      - the_af 4y ago
        > If I have no affiliation, or plan to affiliate with a project, why would I give a shit about what they do? We critique whatever gets shared on HN regardless of our affiliation with it. In fact, why was this shared here, if not to ask for discussion and opinions?
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Do you have any affiliation to me or plan to affiliate with me or my projects? Then why you give a shit about what I write? I'm assuming we two have at least one thing in common, we're here on HN to discuss things we come across, both submission articles and comments, since we're having a conversation right now. That's how this works. So I came across something that I have feeling and opinion about, and that led me to share my opinion about it, as I care about my trade. You're welcome to ignore things even if you have opinions about it, but to request others to do the same in a forum that is meant for discussion, feels a bit unproductive.
airstrike 4y ago
It may be helpful to assume good faith. I think the GP is making the point that if this guy who is "a student" chose that diagram as his architecture for a hobby / learning project, then it's worrying that somewhere along the way we may have inadvertently created the expectation on newbies that this is The Way™ Said differently, it's worrying that people decide to overengineer architectures like that before there's any real need. It's a sysops version of the early optimization problem. Ten years ago, the student would have probably built something much simpler with a couple cron jobs on a simple EC2 instance, maybe celery/rabbitmq as a message queue if he was feeling fancy and called it a day
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  I mean, they are very plainly not concerned about the OP or “state of architecting” but that this successful project coming from a student is going to inspire other students to copy the architecture shown here. Explicitly, > A bunch of people take information they come across on the internet and think that's the only way of doing things, so if someone comes across the post, looks at the architecture they might think building it with so many components is a required thing, not just optional for really big projects. > So basically, I want to save myself and others time. This seems like not only ridiculous critique, but also just plainly not the author’s problem what others choose to do with his open source project. > Said differently, it's worrying that people decide to overengineer architectures like that before there's any real need. It's a sysops version of the early optimization problem And why exactly is it yours or other commenter’s problem what people choose to do with their own time? How does it in any way shape or form impact you what this other person chose to do with their project that you will never maintain, contribute to, or likely even use?
  - airstrike 4y ago
    Again, I think you're focused on this one instance and the GP was saying "if this guy chose this approach, countless more people are making similar decisions", which as a trend in the long run could make it bad "for everyone" (himself and others) You may or may not disagree, but it's arguably a worthwhile comment. Possibly more so than your comment on the merits of someone else's comment... which just derails the conversation into this meta-discussion > And why exactly is it yours or other commenter’s problem what people choose to do with their own time? How does it in any way shape or form impact you what this other person chose to do with their project that you will never maintain, contribute to, or likely even use? Critiquing technology referenced in submitted posts is what we do for fun around here...
psychphysic 4y ago
His comment was valuable and fostered discussion. He's allowed an opinion especially one that's valid. It was constructive and explained how he would want to see it structured. He did it the right way. Where as your comment is unconstructive. Doesn't foster discussion. If the only point you're trying to make is to ask someone to stay quiet why not leave it to the mods or even silently downvote and move on?
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  He completely dismissed the entirety of their architecture as too bloated without any sort of context on the decisions that brought it here. There was no constructive criticism, no “you should do this differently” it was “this is worryingly large and you should feel bad if this isn’t an educational project”. If this is “the right way” then I don’t want to be right, because it’s a shit way that lacks empathy or tact.
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    > dismissed the entirety of their architecture No he didn't. He had a caveat. > no “you should do this differently” That's not the case..he clearly says this is how I would do this differently. None of this matters. Arguing about arguing is futile.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      “Unless this is an educational project” is not an appropriate caveat. Especially about a project that was clearly not submitted as an educational one.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        > Background > This project started from two points: as part of my PhD, I had to become very familiar with working with NOAA forecast results (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4725-3251 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4725-3251). Separately, an old tablet set up as a "Magic Mirror,” and was using a weather module that relied on the Dark Sky API, as well as my Home Assistant setup. So when I heard that it was shutting down, I thought, "I wonder if I could do this.” Plus, I love learning new things (http://alexanderrey.ca/ http://alexanderrey.ca/), and I had been looking for a project to learn Python on, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity! Spoiler alert, but it was way more difficult than I thought, but learned a lot throughout the process, and I think the end result turned out really well! Seems perfectly fine to assume that this might be purely an exercise in order to learn as much as possible, rather than to build something that is trying to be as cost-effective and performant as possible.
sgustard 4y ago
If someone posts their architecture diagram on Hacker News, it's fair game for feedback? Anyone is welcome to ignore said feedback. As the adage goes: Suppose you have a problem, and you say I know, I'll use microservices! Now you have N problems.
nonethewiser 4y ago
I kinda agree but it’s also not that complicated. It’s a critique of a craft many of us share. It’s natural for an engineer to have an opinion on the design and share his opinion with others. He’s also not being mean about it or anything. I would venture as far as saying nearly every personal project built to scale is over engineered.

capableweb 4y ago

I think I already elaborated on why? A bunch of people take information they come across on the internet and think that's the only way of doing things, so if someone comes across the post, looks at the architecture they might think building it with so many components is a required thing, not just optional for really big projects. I'm personally dealing with infrastructure at loads of different places, and the amount of engineers who over-complicate their infrastructure pains me, they all go for a distributed architecture before the products they are building even have any users, because they've read bunch of blog posts about building it that way. It sucks to spend so much time and effort on maintaining and improving something when it's not really needed in the first place. Like using a Ferrari to deliver food in a traffic-heavy city, instead of just having a moped. So basically, I want to save myself and others time.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
Gotta love gate keeping architecture in the interest of “saving others time”. If someone takes one look at one project and decides to copy it’s architecture word for word, then it’s on them. Not on the person who built an open source project, for whatever reason, and put it out there for the world. It’s not your architecture to architect. If you want to build your own service to show best practices, then go for it. You weren’t there to make decisions, you don’t know of the reasoning behind them, and it seems ludicrous to backseat architect with context, let alone without any amount of it.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I don't know what your expertise is exactly, but if someone new in your subject area intentionally made things more complicated than necessary for the scope of the project and publish it as a public resource for others to take inspiration from and learn from, wouldn't you at least have some sort reaction against it? See it as wanting to advance my own trade by providing opinion on the current "everything should be a serverless function" trends in the hope of hopefully be able to move the trade into a different direction.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    > I don't know what your expertise is exactly, but if someone new in your subject area intentionally made things more complicated than necessary for the scope of the project and publish it as a public resource for others to take inspiration from and learn from, wouldn't you at least have some sort reaction against it? If I have no affiliation, or plan to affiliate with a project, why would I give a shit about what they do? It’s their project to figure out. Did they ask you for an architecture review? No. Then don’t backseat architect. It’s as simple as that. Especially when your critique is “you’re doing it all wrong and you should feel bad if it’s not an educational exercise”.
    - the_af 4y ago
      > If I have no affiliation, or plan to affiliate with a project, why would I give a shit about what they do? We critique whatever gets shared on HN regardless of our affiliation with it. In fact, why was this shared here, if not to ask for discussion and opinions?
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Do you have any affiliation to me or plan to affiliate with me or my projects? Then why you give a shit about what I write? I'm assuming we two have at least one thing in common, we're here on HN to discuss things we come across, both submission articles and comments, since we're having a conversation right now. That's how this works. So I came across something that I have feeling and opinion about, and that led me to share my opinion about it, as I care about my trade. You're welcome to ignore things even if you have opinions about it, but to request others to do the same in a forum that is meant for discussion, feels a bit unproductive.

airstrike 4y ago

It may be helpful to assume good faith. I think the GP is making the point that if this guy who is "a student" chose that diagram as his architecture for a hobby / learning project, then it's worrying that somewhere along the way we may have inadvertently created the expectation on newbies that this is The Way™ Said differently, it's worrying that people decide to overengineer architectures like that before there's any real need. It's a sysops version of the early optimization problem. Ten years ago, the student would have probably built something much simpler with a couple cron jobs on a simple EC2 instance, maybe celery/rabbitmq as a message queue if he was feeling fancy and called it a day

mynameisvlad 4y ago
I mean, they are very plainly not concerned about the OP or “state of architecting” but that this successful project coming from a student is going to inspire other students to copy the architecture shown here. Explicitly, > A bunch of people take information they come across on the internet and think that's the only way of doing things, so if someone comes across the post, looks at the architecture they might think building it with so many components is a required thing, not just optional for really big projects. > So basically, I want to save myself and others time. This seems like not only ridiculous critique, but also just plainly not the author’s problem what others choose to do with his open source project. > Said differently, it's worrying that people decide to overengineer architectures like that before there's any real need. It's a sysops version of the early optimization problem And why exactly is it yours or other commenter’s problem what people choose to do with their own time? How does it in any way shape or form impact you what this other person chose to do with their project that you will never maintain, contribute to, or likely even use?
- airstrike 4y ago
  Again, I think you're focused on this one instance and the GP was saying "if this guy chose this approach, countless more people are making similar decisions", which as a trend in the long run could make it bad "for everyone" (himself and others) You may or may not disagree, but it's arguably a worthwhile comment. Possibly more so than your comment on the merits of someone else's comment... which just derails the conversation into this meta-discussion > And why exactly is it yours or other commenter’s problem what people choose to do with their own time? How does it in any way shape or form impact you what this other person chose to do with their project that you will never maintain, contribute to, or likely even use? Critiquing technology referenced in submitted posts is what we do for fun around here...

psychphysic 4y ago

His comment was valuable and fostered discussion. He's allowed an opinion especially one that's valid. It was constructive and explained how he would want to see it structured. He did it the right way. Where as your comment is unconstructive. Doesn't foster discussion. If the only point you're trying to make is to ask someone to stay quiet why not leave it to the mods or even silently downvote and move on?

mynameisvlad 4y ago
He completely dismissed the entirety of their architecture as too bloated without any sort of context on the decisions that brought it here. There was no constructive criticism, no “you should do this differently” it was “this is worryingly large and you should feel bad if this isn’t an educational project”. If this is “the right way” then I don’t want to be right, because it’s a shit way that lacks empathy or tact.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  > dismissed the entirety of their architecture No he didn't. He had a caveat. > no “you should do this differently” That's not the case..he clearly says this is how I would do this differently. None of this matters. Arguing about arguing is futile.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    “Unless this is an educational project” is not an appropriate caveat. Especially about a project that was clearly not submitted as an educational one.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > Background > This project started from two points: as part of my PhD, I had to become very familiar with working with NOAA forecast results (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4725-3251 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4725-3251). Separately, an old tablet set up as a "Magic Mirror,” and was using a weather module that relied on the Dark Sky API, as well as my Home Assistant setup. So when I heard that it was shutting down, I thought, "I wonder if I could do this.” Plus, I love learning new things (http://alexanderrey.ca/ http://alexanderrey.ca/), and I had been looking for a project to learn Python on, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity! Spoiler alert, but it was way more difficult than I thought, but learned a lot throughout the process, and I think the end result turned out really well! Seems perfectly fine to assume that this might be purely an exercise in order to learn as much as possible, rather than to build something that is trying to be as cost-effective and performant as possible.

sgustard 4y ago

If someone posts their architecture diagram on Hacker News, it's fair game for feedback? Anyone is welcome to ignore said feedback. As the adage goes: Suppose you have a problem, and you say I know, I'll use microservices! Now you have N problems.

nonethewiser 4y ago

I kinda agree but it’s also not that complicated. It’s a critique of a craft many of us share. It’s natural for an engineer to have an opinion on the design and share his opinion with others. He’s also not being mean about it or anything. I would venture as far as saying nearly every personal project built to scale is over engineered.