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John Ousterhout also was leading a project called RAMcloud (I thought was interesting) that the article doesn't mention - [1], [2]. Also, he has a book on s/w d

by abhgh 2y ago

John Ousterhout also was leading a project called RAMcloud (I thought was interesting) that the article doesn't mention - [1], [2]. Also, he has a book on s/w design [3] which is short and nice, and is more of a collection of ideas rather than an approach, which I highly recommend. [1] RAMcloud talk by J. Ousterhout:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcUvU3b5co8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcUvU3b5co8 [2] RAMcloud paper: https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/ramcloud.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/ramcloud.pdf [3] A Philosophy of Software Design, https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Software-Design-John-Ousterhout/dp/1732102201 https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Software-Design-John-Ouste...

8s2ngy 2y ago
+1 for 'A Philosophy of Software Design.' I read that book a while ago and really liked his views on a lot of things. Off the top of my head some of them are: complexity being the greatest enemy of software engineers, the importance of strategic programming (as opposed to tacit 'somehow-get-the-job-done' programming), general-purpose abstractions, and having deep modules exposed through simple interfaces.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  +1 One of the only books on design which actually is backed up by data. I had been misled by the Ruby ecosystem earlier in my career to do clean code + refactoring + tdd and this book + actually looking at complex systems such as games made me realize that coding is not about abstractions but it is about data and what the computer needs to do.
  - jasinjames 2y ago
    In your view, what word(s) would you use to describe the following? "a carefully designed API for interacting with piece of data which provides both a consistent technical interface and conceptual understanding of the meaning of said thing" The reason I ask is because the word I've always used for that is "abstraction", but I'm getting the sense that over-abstracted and over-architected frameworks has soured many people to the word. I want to communicate the idea without conjuring up images of java classes with 90 character names. What would you recommend?
    - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
      You are absolutely right. In that sense the right abstraction is what one should go after. But what I mean is the more popular Java / OOP style abstractions like a repository which returns a builder which returns class which you new up and pass to some sort of super interface and its just such a mess. As a technology I really like the JVM and hotspot but good Lord if I have to wade through 10 different things to get there. Finally to answer your question I have started using the actual name of the thing in the language I'm using. Such as a "struct" in c and rust which I mostly use these days.
random_coder 2y ago
Also, a co-author of the Raft consensus algorithm.

by abhgh 2y ago

8s2ngy 2y ago

+1 for 'A Philosophy of Software Design.' I read that book a while ago and really liked his views on a lot of things. Off the top of my head some of them are: complexity being the greatest enemy of software engineers, the importance of strategic programming (as opposed to tacit 'somehow-get-the-job-done' programming), general-purpose abstractions, and having deep modules exposed through simple interfaces.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
+1 One of the only books on design which actually is backed up by data. I had been misled by the Ruby ecosystem earlier in my career to do clean code + refactoring + tdd and this book + actually looking at complex systems such as games made me realize that coding is not about abstractions but it is about data and what the computer needs to do.
- jasinjames 2y ago
  In your view, what word(s) would you use to describe the following? "a carefully designed API for interacting with piece of data which provides both a consistent technical interface and conceptual understanding of the meaning of said thing" The reason I ask is because the word I've always used for that is "abstraction", but I'm getting the sense that over-abstracted and over-architected frameworks has soured many people to the word. I want to communicate the idea without conjuring up images of java classes with 90 character names. What would you recommend?
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    You are absolutely right. In that sense the right abstraction is what one should go after. But what I mean is the more popular Java / OOP style abstractions like a repository which returns a builder which returns class which you new up and pass to some sort of super interface and its just such a mess. As a technology I really like the JVM and hotspot but good Lord if I have to wade through 10 different things to get there. Finally to answer your question I have started using the actual name of the thing in the language I'm using. Such as a "struct" in c and rust which I mostly use these days.

random_coder 2y ago

Also, a co-author of the Raft consensus algorithm.