3 ms·

A couple of weeks ago I had a flat on the way to the airport. It was a total blowout, and my car doesn't include a spare. We were already over budget on our tri

A couple of weeks ago I had a flat on the way to the airport. It was a total blowout, and my car doesn't include a spare. We were already over budget on our trip, so I had the car towed to the closest tire shop and had them put on the cheapest tire that could get me to the airport. I know I'll need to replace other tires, as it's an AWD, and I know it's not a tire I really want. I made a calculated choice to make that a problem for future me due to the time crunch I was under. Programming is a lot like this.

alt227 2y ago
Aside - the fact that cars dont include spares these days is infuriating. IMO its a classic example of real world enshittification
- bdcravens 2y ago
  Supposedly there are reasons (for example, efficiency by avoiding the extra weight) and they give you a kit that's essentially a "fix a flat" product, but in the 2 times I've had a flat in a car outfitted like this, what they provided wasn't useful, usually due to the type of damage to the tire.
- fragmede 2y ago
  that's not enshittification! it sucks, yes, but when coined, the term referred to a platform extracting value from its users by degrading their experience, forcing them to upgrade to a premium plan. your car not having a spare isn't an example of that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
  - sebastiennight 2y ago
    Somebody at Toyota has read your comment and is now adding "spare tyres" to their subscription offering.
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    Many of us grew up with cars having spare tyres as a matter of course. Now car manufacturers are extracting value from their customers by degrading our experience (of safety and expedience of repair), forcing us to pay extra for a spare tyre (if even available), or even upgrade to a better car. Ordinary cars not having a spare tyre as standard equipment any more is a perfect example of enshittification.
me_again 2y ago
A lot of "why TF would anyone you do this?" questions can be answered with variations like this. Borrowing from economics, the discount rate defines how much more valuable something is RIGHT NOW vs at some point in the future. If the system is down and we're losing money by the minute until it is up; if the company will be broke next week unless we make customer X happy; if you have to get to the airport in 2 hours - it is completely rational to make the quick fix. The costs of not doing so outweigh the costs of doing it again properly. It really becomes a problem when the same short term calculation becomes the standard - you can quickly rack up costs that future you or future company will never pay down.
throwaway7e8te 2y ago
I worked at a startup where we had to make a lot of compromises. The (non technical) founders could not get enough funding at the beginning, so they had to constantly raise small amounts to survive the next few months. We had to grow fast and prove that we had a market fit. This meant making compromises, but the technical debt was actually under control. We knew what to improve and how to do it once we had enough resources. Eventually we proved ourselves and got decent funding and could hire more developers. We were looking forward to improving our system. Unfortunately the new guys (many fresh out of college, lead by a few "FAANG"-ish seniors) decided that the technical debt was a proof of our incompetence and convinced the leadership that they needed to take over the technical development and rewrite everything. The result was a year where no major features were added and we lost our momentum. The funding dried up and the company had to let go 2/3 of the employees. The worst part was that the new systems were more complicated to extend due to their clever "scalable design" (distributed monolith) with more micro services than developers. When the rewrite was done and it was time to add the new features, they had lost the trust of the leadership and just threw code at it in desperation to get things done as quickly as possible. I pithy the developers that inherited the result... By that time the rock stars had moved on and are inflicting damage elsewhere after touring conferences where they presented their greatness.
- louwrentius 2y ago
  One of the most important skills a person can have is to assess a situation, understand the actual context and constraints and build something based on this information. It sounds to me your team worked this way. You were playing within the given constraints. Exactly the opposite of the one trick pony’s who just mindlessly apply what they learned or think is cool with a total disregard for context.

alt227 2y ago

Aside - the fact that cars dont include spares these days is infuriating. IMO its a classic example of real world enshittification

bdcravens 2y ago
Supposedly there are reasons (for example, efficiency by avoiding the extra weight) and they give you a kit that's essentially a "fix a flat" product, but in the 2 times I've had a flat in a car outfitted like this, what they provided wasn't useful, usually due to the type of damage to the tire.
fragmede 2y ago
that's not enshittification! it sucks, yes, but when coined, the term referred to a platform extracting value from its users by degrading their experience, forcing them to upgrade to a premium plan. your car not having a spare isn't an example of that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- sebastiennight 2y ago
  Somebody at Toyota has read your comment and is now adding "spare tyres" to their subscription offering.
- CRConrad 2y ago
  Many of us grew up with cars having spare tyres as a matter of course. Now car manufacturers are extracting value from their customers by degrading our experience (of safety and expedience of repair), forcing us to pay extra for a spare tyre (if even available), or even upgrade to a better car. Ordinary cars not having a spare tyre as standard equipment any more is a perfect example of enshittification.

me_again 2y ago

A lot of "why TF would anyone you do this?" questions can be answered with variations like this. Borrowing from economics, the discount rate defines how much more valuable something is RIGHT NOW vs at some point in the future. If the system is down and we're losing money by the minute until it is up; if the company will be broke next week unless we make customer X happy; if you have to get to the airport in 2 hours - it is completely rational to make the quick fix. The costs of not doing so outweigh the costs of doing it again properly. It really becomes a problem when the same short term calculation becomes the standard - you can quickly rack up costs that future you or future company will never pay down.

throwaway7e8te 2y ago

I worked at a startup where we had to make a lot of compromises. The (non technical) founders could not get enough funding at the beginning, so they had to constantly raise small amounts to survive the next few months. We had to grow fast and prove that we had a market fit. This meant making compromises, but the technical debt was actually under control. We knew what to improve and how to do it once we had enough resources. Eventually we proved ourselves and got decent funding and could hire more developers. We were looking forward to improving our system. Unfortunately the new guys (many fresh out of college, lead by a few "FAANG"-ish seniors) decided that the technical debt was a proof of our incompetence and convinced the leadership that they needed to take over the technical development and rewrite everything. The result was a year where no major features were added and we lost our momentum. The funding dried up and the company had to let go 2/3 of the employees. The worst part was that the new systems were more complicated to extend due to their clever "scalable design" (distributed monolith) with more micro services than developers. When the rewrite was done and it was time to add the new features, they had lost the trust of the leadership and just threw code at it in desperation to get things done as quickly as possible. I pithy the developers that inherited the result... By that time the rock stars had moved on and are inflicting damage elsewhere after touring conferences where they presented their greatness.

louwrentius 2y ago
One of the most important skills a person can have is to assess a situation, understand the actual context and constraints and build something based on this information. It sounds to me your team worked this way. You were playing within the given constraints. Exactly the opposite of the one trick pony’s who just mindlessly apply what they learned or think is cool with a total disregard for context.