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So you're openly saying you're fine with quantity over quality.... in software engineering? That's fine for a MVP, maybe, but nothing beyond on that IMHO unless

So you're openly saying you're fine with quantity over quality.... in software engineering? That's fine for a MVP, maybe, but nothing beyond on that IMHO unless they're throw away scripts. "Houston, we have a problem." "Yeah, but we did it in a 10th of the time"

TemptedMuse 10mo ago
Here is the thing, most software engineers are not designing rockets, they are making basic CRUD apps. If there is a minor defect it can be caught and corrected without much issue. Our jobs are a lot less "critical infrastructure" than a lot of software engineers will allow their egos to accept. Sure if you are making some medical surgery robot do it right, but if you are making a website the recommends wine pairings who cares if one of the buttons has a weird animation bug that doesn't even get noticed for a couple of years.
- dlisboa 10mo ago
  I think I'm "most" engineers and I haven't ever worked on something that was "just" a CRUD app. Having a DB behind your web app doesn't make it "just" a CRUD. It's really overestimated how many simple apps exist.
  - jf22 10mo ago
    What kind of apps do you work on?
    - dlisboa 10mo ago
      Regular SaaS products of different kinds, cloud software, hosting software, etc. Really representative of most of the Web-enabled software out there. For every one of them there has been an almost negligible amount of CRUD code, the meat of every one of those apps was very specific business logic. Some were also heavy on the frontend with equal amount of complexity on the backend. As a senior/staff level engineer you also have dive into other things like platform enablement, internal tooling, background jobs and data wrangling, distributed architectures, etc. which are even farther from CRUD.
      - jf22 10mo ago
        A fancy CRUD app is still a CRUD app.
        dlisboa 10mo ago
        Yes, like a guided missile is a fancy firecracker.
        TemptedMuse 10mo ago
        Not to call you out but this is exactly what I meant when I said software engineers have egos that will not let them accept that they are not designing critical stuff. Comparing your cloud based CRUD app to a missile is a perfect illustration. There is no dishonor in admitting that our stuff isn't going to kill anyone if there is a bug. Don't write bad code, but also sometimes just getting something out the door is much better than perfect quality (bird in the hand and all that).
        dlisboa 10mo ago
        Not to call you out either but it seems you have really no idea what a basic CRUD app is. Which is fine, I guess not everyone likes to reads the base definitions of these things. It's clear I replied to the wrong person as we don't have a shared understanding of complexity.
        instig007 10mo ago
        > software engineers have egos that will not let them accept that they are not designing critical stuff > Don't write bad code, but also sometimes just getting something out the door is much better than perfect quality (bird in the hand and all that). Your bank account can be represented as a CR app, it's two letters short of CRUD, but it doesn't make it simple or simpler in any sense of the words. Now the question: how much are you tolerant to bugs in your bank account? How often can they happen before you complain?
        10mo ago
jf22 10mo ago
> quantity over quality Yes? Making quality concessions for more code or features is part of the job.
bluesnowmonkey 10mo ago
Of course it's fine for any project. There is exactly one "best" programmer in the world, and at this moment he/she is working on at most one project. Every other project in the world is accepting less than the "best" possible quality. Yes... in software engineering. As soon as you sat down at the keyboard this morning, your employer accepted a sacrifice in quality for the sake of quantity. So did mine. Because neither one of us is the best. They could have hired someone better but they hired you and they're fine with that. They'd rather have the code you produce today than not have it. It's the same for an AI. It could produce some code for you, right now, for nearly free. Would you rather have that code or not have it? It depends on the situation, yeah not always but sometimes it's worth having.
- WesleyJohnson 10mo ago
  I didn't intend to imply "best" even in the scope of a team, let alone every software engineer in the world. But, I understand your point and it's fair.

TemptedMuse 10mo ago

Here is the thing, most software engineers are not designing rockets, they are making basic CRUD apps. If there is a minor defect it can be caught and corrected without much issue. Our jobs are a lot less "critical infrastructure" than a lot of software engineers will allow their egos to accept. Sure if you are making some medical surgery robot do it right, but if you are making a website the recommends wine pairings who cares if one of the buttons has a weird animation bug that doesn't even get noticed for a couple of years.

dlisboa 10mo ago
I think I'm "most" engineers and I haven't ever worked on something that was "just" a CRUD app. Having a DB behind your web app doesn't make it "just" a CRUD. It's really overestimated how many simple apps exist.
- jf22 10mo ago
  What kind of apps do you work on?
  - dlisboa 10mo ago
    Regular SaaS products of different kinds, cloud software, hosting software, etc. Really representative of most of the Web-enabled software out there. For every one of them there has been an almost negligible amount of CRUD code, the meat of every one of those apps was very specific business logic. Some were also heavy on the frontend with equal amount of complexity on the backend. As a senior/staff level engineer you also have dive into other things like platform enablement, internal tooling, background jobs and data wrangling, distributed architectures, etc. which are even farther from CRUD.
    - jf22 10mo ago
      A fancy CRUD app is still a CRUD app.
      - dlisboa 10mo ago
        Yes, like a guided missile is a fancy firecracker.
        TemptedMuse 10mo ago
        Not to call you out but this is exactly what I meant when I said software engineers have egos that will not let them accept that they are not designing critical stuff. Comparing your cloud based CRUD app to a missile is a perfect illustration. There is no dishonor in admitting that our stuff isn't going to kill anyone if there is a bug. Don't write bad code, but also sometimes just getting something out the door is much better than perfect quality (bird in the hand and all that).
        dlisboa 10mo ago
        Not to call you out either but it seems you have really no idea what a basic CRUD app is. Which is fine, I guess not everyone likes to reads the base definitions of these things. It's clear I replied to the wrong person as we don't have a shared understanding of complexity.
        instig007 10mo ago
        > software engineers have egos that will not let them accept that they are not designing critical stuff > Don't write bad code, but also sometimes just getting something out the door is much better than perfect quality (bird in the hand and all that). Your bank account can be represented as a CR app, it's two letters short of CRUD, but it doesn't make it simple or simpler in any sense of the words. Now the question: how much are you tolerant to bugs in your bank account? How often can they happen before you complain?
        10mo ago

jf22 10mo ago

> quantity over quality Yes? Making quality concessions for more code or features is part of the job.

bluesnowmonkey 10mo ago

Of course it's fine for any project. There is exactly one "best" programmer in the world, and at this moment he/she is working on at most one project. Every other project in the world is accepting less than the "best" possible quality. Yes... in software engineering. As soon as you sat down at the keyboard this morning, your employer accepted a sacrifice in quality for the sake of quantity. So did mine. Because neither one of us is the best. They could have hired someone better but they hired you and they're fine with that. They'd rather have the code you produce today than not have it. It's the same for an AI. It could produce some code for you, right now, for nearly free. Would you rather have that code or not have it? It depends on the situation, yeah not always but sometimes it's worth having.

WesleyJohnson 10mo ago
I didn't intend to imply "best" even in the scope of a team, let alone every software engineer in the world. But, I understand your point and it's fair.