7 ms·

Creating complex layers upon layers just to "solve" a very simple problem is not innovation. It's shittification.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
Misappropriating a trendy word to use as a descriptor for anything you don’t like. This is how someone speaks immediately before taking a look in the mirror and realising that they sound like their parents. You are not the be-all end-all and your drive-by analysis of a technology is going to be biased by its suitability for what you do day-to-day. No amount of experience justifies your attitude.
- Fischgericht 3y ago
  I am sorry if the wording of my opinion has offended you. My parents most likely would have complained that they'd need 58 floppy disks to run this programming language. :)
  - lolinder 3y ago
    It's not that it's offensive, it's just not conducive to constructive dialog. "Enshittification" has rapidly come to mean nothing more than "changing in ways I don't like", just crasser.
    - Fischgericht 3y ago
      Ok, I'll avoid that term in the future, then.
n42 3y ago
If your configurations are simple, you don’t need this. If they are not, you might. Because you have not run into the problems this has addressed in your career, does not mean that you know better than Apple how to solve them. In fact, it means like you are uniquely unqualified to solve them. Acting like you are in a severely condescending dismissal of the engineers who worked on this makes for boring conversation.
- flir 3y ago
  Maybe give us an example? It's an interesting question - just how complex are our biggest configuration problems today?
  - n42 3y ago
    A team of 6 responsible for overseeing the deployment of all software in a department of 1000 to any number of deployment environments with tight budgets on durability, delivery time, and the autonomy of the teams that are writing the configuration may reach for this, or something similar, over the Windows Registry
  - cstrahan 3y ago
    Kubernetes config is a decent example. I had ChatGPT generate a representative silly example -- the content doesn't matter so much as the structure: https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a75ea61 https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a7... Now consider 100s (if not 1000s) of such files. I haven't given Pkl an in depth look yet, but I can say that the Industry Standard™ of "simple YAML" + string substitution (with delicate, error prone indentation -- since YAML is indentation sensitive) is easily beat by any of: - https://jsonnet.org/ https://jsonnet.org/ - https://nickel-lang.org/ https://nickel-lang.org/ - https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html - https://dhall-lang.org/ https://dhall-lang.org/ - (insert many more here, probably including Pkl)
    - flir 3y ago
      You're absolutely right, k8s is a pig.
      - fzeindl 3y ago
        Especially since k8s allows using arbitrary labels for plugins, effectively creating „stringly typed“ programming. Nobody is stopped from compiling code, converting it to base64 and storing it into a label for later execution. Arbitrary parameters like this are the opposite of a unifying abstraction. That ingress-behavior wasn‘t defined but pluggable to suit existing load balancers also broke the abstraction.
bborud 3y ago
It is no different when you are trying to solve a complex problem and complex layers upon layers obfuscate and confound you when you are trying to figure out why some component ends up with configuration values that are nowhere to be found in your input files.

Misappropriating a trendy word to use as a descriptor for anything you don’t like. This is how someone speaks immediately before taking a look in the mirror and realising that they sound like their parents. You are not the be-all end-all and your drive-by analysis of a technology is going to be biased by its suitability for what you do day-to-day. No amount of experience justifies your attitude.

Fischgericht 3y ago
I am sorry if the wording of my opinion has offended you. My parents most likely would have complained that they'd need 58 floppy disks to run this programming language. :)
- lolinder 3y ago
  It's not that it's offensive, it's just not conducive to constructive dialog. "Enshittification" has rapidly come to mean nothing more than "changing in ways I don't like", just crasser.
  - Fischgericht 3y ago
    Ok, I'll avoid that term in the future, then.

n42 3y ago

If your configurations are simple, you don’t need this. If they are not, you might. Because you have not run into the problems this has addressed in your career, does not mean that you know better than Apple how to solve them. In fact, it means like you are uniquely unqualified to solve them. Acting like you are in a severely condescending dismissal of the engineers who worked on this makes for boring conversation.

flir 3y ago
Maybe give us an example? It's an interesting question - just how complex are our biggest configuration problems today?
- n42 3y ago
  A team of 6 responsible for overseeing the deployment of all software in a department of 1000 to any number of deployment environments with tight budgets on durability, delivery time, and the autonomy of the teams that are writing the configuration may reach for this, or something similar, over the Windows Registry
- cstrahan 3y ago
  Kubernetes config is a decent example. I had ChatGPT generate a representative silly example -- the content doesn't matter so much as the structure: https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a75ea61 https://gist.github.com/cstrahan/528b00cd5c3a22e3d8f057bb1a7... Now consider 100s (if not 1000s) of such files. I haven't given Pkl an in depth look yet, but I can say that the Industry Standard™ of "simple YAML" + string substitution (with delicate, error prone indentation -- since YAML is indentation sensitive) is easily beat by any of: - https://jsonnet.org/ https://jsonnet.org/ - https://nickel-lang.org/ https://nickel-lang.org/ - https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html - https://dhall-lang.org/ https://dhall-lang.org/ - (insert many more here, probably including Pkl)
  - flir 3y ago
    You're absolutely right, k8s is a pig.
    - fzeindl 3y ago
      Especially since k8s allows using arbitrary labels for plugins, effectively creating „stringly typed“ programming. Nobody is stopped from compiling code, converting it to base64 and storing it into a label for later execution. Arbitrary parameters like this are the opposite of a unifying abstraction. That ingress-behavior wasn‘t defined but pluggable to suit existing load balancers also broke the abstraction.

bborud 3y ago

It is no different when you are trying to solve a complex problem and complex layers upon layers obfuscate and confound you when you are trying to figure out why some component ends up with configuration values that are nowhere to be found in your input files.