3 ms·

what's the opposite problem statement?

by _zoltan_ 11mo ago

MrDarcy 11mo ago
The ivory tower standing in the way of delivering value I think.
- colechristensen 11mo ago
  To be more specific, goals of perfection where perfection does not at all matter.
  - johncolanduoni 11mo ago
    What does bothering to read some distributed systems literature have to do with demanding unnecessary perfection? Did NATS have in their docs that JetStream accepted split brain conditions as a reality, or that metadata corruption could silently delete a topic? You could maybe argue the fsync default was a tradeoff, though I think it’s a bad one (not the existence of the flag, just the default being “false”). The rest are not the kind of bugs you expect to see in a 5 year old persistence layer.
    - stmw 11mo ago
      Exactly, "losing data from acknowledged writes" is not failing to be perfect, it's failing to deliver on the (advertised) basics of storing your data.
  - LaGrange 11mo ago
    Last time I was at school requirement analysis was a thing, but do go off.
whimsicalism 11mo ago
People overly beholden to tried and true 'known' way of addressing a problem space and not considering/belittling alternatives. Many of the things that have been most aggressively 'bitter lesson'ed in the last decade fall into this category.
- awesome_dude 11mo ago
  Like this bug report? The things that have been "disrupted" haven't delivered - Blockchains are still a scam, Food delivery services are worse than before (Restaurants are worse off, the people making the deliveries are worse off), Taxis still needed to go back and vet drivers to ensure that they weren't fiends.
  - hbbio 11mo ago
    > Blockchains are still a scam Did you actually look at the blockchain nodes implementation as of 2025 and what's in the roadmap? Ethereum nodes/L2s with optimistic or zk-proofs are probably the most advanced distributed databases that actually work. (not talking about "coins" and stuff obviously, another debate)
    - otterley 11mo ago
      > Ethereum nodes/L2s with optimistic or zk-proofs are probably the most advanced distributed databases that actually work. What are you comparing against? Aren't they slower, less convenient, and less available than, say, DynamoDB or Spanner, both of which have been in full-service, reliable operation since 2012?
      - drdrey 11mo ago
        the big difference is the trust assumption, anyone can join or leave the network of nodes at any time
        charcircuit 11mo ago
        I think you are being downvoted because Ethereum requires you to stake 32 Eth (about $100k), and the entry queue right now is about 9 days and the exit queue is about 20 days. So only people with enough capital can join the network and it takes quite some time to join or leave as opposed to being able to do it at any time you want.

what's the opposite problem statement?

MrDarcy 11mo ago

The ivory tower standing in the way of delivering value I think.

colechristensen 11mo ago
To be more specific, goals of perfection where perfection does not at all matter.
- johncolanduoni 11mo ago
  What does bothering to read some distributed systems literature have to do with demanding unnecessary perfection? Did NATS have in their docs that JetStream accepted split brain conditions as a reality, or that metadata corruption could silently delete a topic? You could maybe argue the fsync default was a tradeoff, though I think it’s a bad one (not the existence of the flag, just the default being “false”). The rest are not the kind of bugs you expect to see in a 5 year old persistence layer.
  - stmw 11mo ago
    Exactly, "losing data from acknowledged writes" is not failing to be perfect, it's failing to deliver on the (advertised) basics of storing your data.
- LaGrange 11mo ago
  Last time I was at school requirement analysis was a thing, but do go off.

whimsicalism 11mo ago

People overly beholden to tried and true 'known' way of addressing a problem space and not considering/belittling alternatives. Many of the things that have been most aggressively 'bitter lesson'ed in the last decade fall into this category.

awesome_dude 11mo ago
Like this bug report? The things that have been "disrupted" haven't delivered - Blockchains are still a scam, Food delivery services are worse than before (Restaurants are worse off, the people making the deliveries are worse off), Taxis still needed to go back and vet drivers to ensure that they weren't fiends.
- hbbio 11mo ago
  > Blockchains are still a scam Did you actually look at the blockchain nodes implementation as of 2025 and what's in the roadmap? Ethereum nodes/L2s with optimistic or zk-proofs are probably the most advanced distributed databases that actually work. (not talking about "coins" and stuff obviously, another debate)
  - otterley 11mo ago
    > Ethereum nodes/L2s with optimistic or zk-proofs are probably the most advanced distributed databases that actually work. What are you comparing against? Aren't they slower, less convenient, and less available than, say, DynamoDB or Spanner, both of which have been in full-service, reliable operation since 2012?
    - drdrey 11mo ago
      the big difference is the trust assumption, anyone can join or leave the network of nodes at any time
      - charcircuit 11mo ago
        I think you are being downvoted because Ethereum requires you to stake 32 Eth (about $100k), and the entry queue right now is about 9 days and the exit queue is about 20 days. So only people with enough capital can join the network and it takes quite some time to join or leave as opposed to being able to do it at any time you want.