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To add another to your list: Being able to easily use different programming languages. Not every language is a good fit for every problem. Being able to write

by jupp0r 3y ago

To add another to your list: Being able to easily use different programming languages. Not every language is a good fit for every problem. Being able to write your machine learning deduction services in Python, your server side rendered UI in Rails and your IO and concurrency heavy services in Go might justify the additional overhead of having separate services for these three.

renegade-otter 3y ago
These are almost never pragmatic decisions. Giving teams independence over the stack usually results in resume-driven development, and now your JS developers are forced to maintain a Go server because some jock thought it was a cool thing to do . Due diligence in these cases is rare.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  I don't believe a team should have that much say in their technology, unless they themselves are also responsible for hiring, training, etcetera - so it kinda depends on how autonomous a team is. That said, as the article also mentions, "micro" can be a bit of a misnomer; you could have a 50 person team working on a single "micro" service, in which case things like hiring and training are much more natural. (to add, I've never worked in a team of 50 on one product; 50 people is A Lot)
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  I've seen this play out for reals at a place a few years ago. Every team used a different tech, and all of them selected because of resume-driven development. People moving teams to get a particular tech on their resume. No common method for deployment, and endless issues getting things deployed. Everyone's a newbie because we were all learning a new, cool, stack. And everyone making stupid newbie mistakes. Never again. When I build teams forevermore, I pick the tech stack and I recruit people who know that tech stack, or want to learn that tech stack. And we stick to that tech stack whenever possible.
  - sgarland 3y ago
    The worst part about this type of org (speaking as an SRE / DBRE) is that they also don’t do SRE correctly, so these piles of shit get yeeted into prod, fall apart, and then the already over-burdened SREs and DBREs have to figure out how it works so they can fix it. I didn’t know how to troubleshoot Node, but I did know how to read docs. Suddenly I can troubleshoot Node. Hooray. I concur with your sentiment, and would also be an absolute dictator for tech stack and workload management. We’re not using Node, we’re avoiding React if at all possible, every dev touching the DB in any way will know SQL, and no one is using Scrum.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Indeed, I am also an advocate of having the organization define a specific set of languages. Even with just one, it isn't really a single one. To pick on JS as example, not only there is JavaScript to learn, TypeScript might also be part of the stack, then there is the whole browser stack, and eventually node ecosystem as well. Take the remaining UNIX/Windows related knowledge to get development and deployment into production going, SQL and the related stored procedures syntax for RDMS backends. Eventually the need to know either C or C++, to contribute to V8 native extensions or WASM. Now those folks need to learn about Go, Go's standard tooling, Go's ecosystem, IDE or programmer's editor customizations for Go code, and how to approach all the development workflows they are confortable of from the point of view of a Go developer.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Yes, but the choice to add a new programming language to your company's profile has to be taken with care and due diligence; you should make sure to have a number of developers that know the new language, offer training, incorporate it into your hiring, etc. It's an added node to your dependency graph, which can quickly become unmanageable. You should always look into existing languages first. There's a lot of "I rewrote this thing into $language for a 100x performance boost" posts, in a lot of cases the comments are like "Yeah but if you rewrote it in the original language you could make it a lot faster too". For a cool visualisation of this problem, check out https://boringtechnology.club/ https://boringtechnology.club/

by jupp0r 3y ago

renegade-otter 3y ago

These are almost never pragmatic decisions. Giving teams independence over the stack usually results in resume-driven development, and now your JS developers are forced to maintain a Go server because some jock thought it was a cool thing to do . Due diligence in these cases is rare.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I don't believe a team should have that much say in their technology, unless they themselves are also responsible for hiring, training, etcetera - so it kinda depends on how autonomous a team is. That said, as the article also mentions, "micro" can be a bit of a misnomer; you could have a 50 person team working on a single "micro" service, in which case things like hiring and training are much more natural. (to add, I've never worked in a team of 50 on one product; 50 people is A Lot)
marcus_holmes 3y ago
I've seen this play out for reals at a place a few years ago. Every team used a different tech, and all of them selected because of resume-driven development. People moving teams to get a particular tech on their resume. No common method for deployment, and endless issues getting things deployed. Everyone's a newbie because we were all learning a new, cool, stack. And everyone making stupid newbie mistakes. Never again. When I build teams forevermore, I pick the tech stack and I recruit people who know that tech stack, or want to learn that tech stack. And we stick to that tech stack whenever possible.
- sgarland 3y ago
  The worst part about this type of org (speaking as an SRE / DBRE) is that they also don’t do SRE correctly, so these piles of shit get yeeted into prod, fall apart, and then the already over-burdened SREs and DBREs have to figure out how it works so they can fix it. I didn’t know how to troubleshoot Node, but I did know how to read docs. Suddenly I can troubleshoot Node. Hooray. I concur with your sentiment, and would also be an absolute dictator for tech stack and workload management. We’re not using Node, we’re avoiding React if at all possible, every dev touching the DB in any way will know SQL, and no one is using Scrum.
pjmlp 3y ago
Indeed, I am also an advocate of having the organization define a specific set of languages. Even with just one, it isn't really a single one. To pick on JS as example, not only there is JavaScript to learn, TypeScript might also be part of the stack, then there is the whole browser stack, and eventually node ecosystem as well. Take the remaining UNIX/Windows related knowledge to get development and deployment into production going, SQL and the related stored procedures syntax for RDMS backends. Eventually the need to know either C or C++, to contribute to V8 native extensions or WASM. Now those folks need to learn about Go, Go's standard tooling, Go's ecosystem, IDE or programmer's editor customizations for Go code, and how to approach all the development workflows they are confortable of from the point of view of a Go developer.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

Yes, but the choice to add a new programming language to your company's profile has to be taken with care and due diligence; you should make sure to have a number of developers that know the new language, offer training, incorporate it into your hiring, etc. It's an added node to your dependency graph, which can quickly become unmanageable. You should always look into existing languages first. There's a lot of "I rewrote this thing into $language for a 100x performance boost" posts, in a lot of cases the comments are like "Yeah but if you rewrote it in the original language you could make it a lot faster too". For a cool visualisation of this problem, check out https://boringtechnology.club/ https://boringtechnology.club/