5 ms·

If this sounds like basic advice, consider there are a lot of people out there that believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, p

by senko 6mo ago

If this sounds like basic advice, consider there are a lot of people out there that believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices". Saying "you can just run things on a cheap VPS" sounds amateurish: people are immediately out with "Yeah but scaling", "Yeah but high availability", "Yeah but backups", "Yeah but now you have to maintain it" arguments, that are basically regurgitated sales pitches for various cloud platforms. It's learned helplessness.

ramraj07 6mo ago
Apparently the phrase cargo cult software engineering is not common anymore. Explains these things perfectly.
- rcbdev 6mo ago
  I end up explaining this term to every junior developer that doesn't know it sooner or later, the same way I explain bike shedding to all PMs that don't know it... often sooner, rather than later. It seems to really help if you can put a term to it.
  - conductr 6mo ago
    > It seems to really help if you can put a term to it. It’s sad this whole group of people only respond to what amounts to filler slide deck material. Defined business vocabulary, acronyms, etc.
- throwatdem12311 6mo ago
  Heh, I was gonna say cargo cult might mean something different in today’s programming landscape but then I thought about it for a second and it actually reinforces th meaning.
InfraScaler 6mo ago
I don't know what to say. People keep saying these engineers exist and here I am not having seen a single, and I follow many indie hackers communities.
- dwedge 6mo ago
  A devops coworker found my blog and asked me how I host it, is it Kubernetes. I told him it's a dedicated server and he seemed amazed. And this was just a blog. It's real
  - InfraScaler 6mo ago
    Does your coworker run a blog on k8s?
    - dwedge 6mo ago
      None of them self host anything at all. It's like that skill was totally skipped. But they advise and consult on infra
      - Hnrobert42 6mo ago
        Well, by the time you are hiring a dedicated infra role, you should be past the single VPS stage.
        dwedge 6mo ago
        My point is that none of these coworkers have ever been at that stage. He was surprised about me hosting something because he seems to think hosting is expensive and for companies. Straight in at the top end of k8s and microservices
        wookmaster 6mo ago
        There's plenty of people that got a CS degree and went to work and this is only a job for them, they have no interest outside of work. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people so I get off work troubleshooting issues to troubleshoot issues at home lol though there aren't that many just my choice to self host cameras through HomeKit sometimes falls apart somehow but im also squeezing every KB or RAM out of that beelink I can.
kandros 6mo ago
“Cloud-native natives” had so much free plans that had no need to understand what a basic app really needs.
throw-the-towel 6mo ago
And now big tech often doesn't even have the high availability to show for all that complexity.
- lamasery 6mo ago
  The better availability and scalability of “the cloud” always relied on so many things being done and maintained just right by just the right people that I don’t think it’s ever been broadly true. You get such a large performance malus and increase in complexity right from the start with The Cloud that it’ starts at a serious deficit, and only eventually maybe overcomes that to be overall beneficial with the right workload, people, and processes. Most companies are lacking minimum two of those to justify “the cloud”. And that’s without even considering the cost. What I think it actually is, is a way for companies that can’t competently (I mean at an organizational/managerial level) maintain and adequately make-available computing resources, to pay someone else to do it. They’re so bad at that, that they’re willing to pay large costs in money, performance, and maybe uptime to get it.
- faangguyindia 6mo ago
  Remember if you ever feel disappointed, the king of scale Google playstore updates stats once a day
  - CodesInChaos 6mo ago
    Not just stats. Configuration changes take around a day to take effect as well. Figuring out how to do authentication and permissions was such a pain. A half-assed integration with google cloud doesn't quite behave like the normal google cloud. Vague error messages. And every time you changed something you couldn't be certain your new setting was incorrect until you waited for an approximate day.
  - dietr1ch 6mo ago
    Google is just using it's cozy position rather than pushing the forefront in most of their products
GorbachevyChase 6mo ago
Don’t forget that people involved in information technology procurement will pay very large sums of the company’s money to not have to understand anything.
- NohatCoder 6mo ago
  Don’t forget that people involved in information technology procurement will pay very large sums of the company’s money to not understand anything. FTFY
jayd16 6mo ago
Hmm backups seems like an important one.
- cj 6mo ago
  “Guys, we need to postpone our beta launch! We need another week to implement a backup strategy with point in time recovery!” You don’t need backups until you have customers.
  - jayd16 6mo ago
    So go live without testing the backup in the beta at all?
    - cj 6mo ago
      Yes! Why build a backup process before you know you have data worth backing up.
      - jayd16 6mo ago
        Why go live if you don't have a reasonable expectation of users? Worrying about HA when you don't have customers that need it is one thing, but I wouldn't want to be in a place where I have to put a banner on the website asking users to please make a new account because we had an oopsie.
        bombcar 6mo ago
        To be fair, there's a big difference between "we do periodic backups" and "we can restore to any millisecond since product launch.
        jayd16 6mo ago
        Sure, but it seemed to be that any backups at all were being called too frivolous.
operatingthetan 6mo ago
When I was a consultant we would plan out 25 piece cloud deployments for little pie in the sky apps that would never see more than 200 users. Everyone has been trained that 'cloud' means a lot of expensive moving parts and doesn't stop to plan their deployments beyond that.
- echelon 6mo ago
  Digital ocean has Kubernetes ffs. It's all of five minutes to write a deployment yaml and ingress and have literally anything on the web for a handful of dollars a month. I've written rust services doing 5k QPS on DO's cheapest kube setup. It's not rocket science. Serverless node buns with vite reacts are more complicated than this. Ten lines of static, repeatable, versioned yaml config vs a web based click by click deploy installer with JavaScript build pipelines and magical well wishes that the pathing and vendor specific config are correct. And don't tell me VPS FTP PHP or sshing into a box to special snowflake your own process runner are better than simple vanilla managed kube. You can be live on the web from zero in 5 minutes with Digital Ocean kube, and that's counting their onboarding.
  - senko 6mo ago
    > It's not rocket science. Neither is "apt install caddy".
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    It's like the old Herman cartoon - "Sure I could sell it to you for $50, but wouldn't you rather have a $5,000 painting?" People often don't like admitting that their project does not require a rocket and the associated scientists. Often even Kubernetes and friends is a bridge too far for what is realistically a single-page PHP app.
    - operatingthetan 6mo ago
      The other factor is 'not my money' syndrome. People who work at companies and don't have a real stake often don't feel bad about burning it for the sake of convenience.
Lalabadie 6mo ago
More and more, I'm seeing this issue with agents-based workflows as well. The training set is full (in quantity and in proportion) of codebases that are organized for very large teams, so that's what most prompted architectures lead to. In my case I'm seeing it a lot on the front-end side. My clients end up with single-page apps that install Shadcn, Tailwind, React, React Router, Axios, Zod, React Form and Vite, all to center a some input elements and perform a few in-browser API calls. It's a huge maintenance burden even before they start getting value out of it. These large setups are often a correct answer, but not the right one for the situation.
littlestymaar 6mo ago
> If this sounds like basic advice, consider there are a lot of people out there that believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices". I currently work in a small b2c startup with 200 active users (and targeting 5000 by the end of the year) and we're already paying AWS $1000/month on infra and it drives me crazy… And the deployment process is also over-engineered in a way that makes it hard to change anything (if you want to release without changing things too much that's fine, but changing the deployment process is already a nightmare). “But best practices”, “but scalability”, “but 99.999% uptime” …
shantnutiwari 6mo ago
"believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices"." Its worse than that. Thats how they are taught, and shamed if they dont "enterprise" their hello world app with 20 layers of failsafes...

by senko 6mo ago

ramraj07 6mo ago

Apparently the phrase cargo cult software engineering is not common anymore. Explains these things perfectly.

rcbdev 6mo ago
I end up explaining this term to every junior developer that doesn't know it sooner or later, the same way I explain bike shedding to all PMs that don't know it... often sooner, rather than later. It seems to really help if you can put a term to it.
- conductr 6mo ago
  > It seems to really help if you can put a term to it. It’s sad this whole group of people only respond to what amounts to filler slide deck material. Defined business vocabulary, acronyms, etc.
throwatdem12311 6mo ago
Heh, I was gonna say cargo cult might mean something different in today’s programming landscape but then I thought about it for a second and it actually reinforces th meaning.

InfraScaler 6mo ago

I don't know what to say. People keep saying these engineers exist and here I am not having seen a single, and I follow many indie hackers communities.

dwedge 6mo ago
A devops coworker found my blog and asked me how I host it, is it Kubernetes. I told him it's a dedicated server and he seemed amazed. And this was just a blog. It's real
- InfraScaler 6mo ago
  Does your coworker run a blog on k8s?
  - dwedge 6mo ago
    None of them self host anything at all. It's like that skill was totally skipped. But they advise and consult on infra
    - Hnrobert42 6mo ago
      Well, by the time you are hiring a dedicated infra role, you should be past the single VPS stage.
      - dwedge 6mo ago
        My point is that none of these coworkers have ever been at that stage. He was surprised about me hosting something because he seems to think hosting is expensive and for companies. Straight in at the top end of k8s and microservices
        wookmaster 6mo ago
        There's plenty of people that got a CS degree and went to work and this is only a job for them, they have no interest outside of work. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people so I get off work troubleshooting issues to troubleshoot issues at home lol though there aren't that many just my choice to self host cameras through HomeKit sometimes falls apart somehow but im also squeezing every KB or RAM out of that beelink I can.

kandros 6mo ago

“Cloud-native natives” had so much free plans that had no need to understand what a basic app really needs.

throw-the-towel 6mo ago

And now big tech often doesn't even have the high availability to show for all that complexity.

lamasery 6mo ago
The better availability and scalability of “the cloud” always relied on so many things being done and maintained just right by just the right people that I don’t think it’s ever been broadly true. You get such a large performance malus and increase in complexity right from the start with The Cloud that it’ starts at a serious deficit, and only eventually maybe overcomes that to be overall beneficial with the right workload, people, and processes. Most companies are lacking minimum two of those to justify “the cloud”. And that’s without even considering the cost. What I think it actually is, is a way for companies that can’t competently (I mean at an organizational/managerial level) maintain and adequately make-available computing resources, to pay someone else to do it. They’re so bad at that, that they’re willing to pay large costs in money, performance, and maybe uptime to get it.
faangguyindia 6mo ago
Remember if you ever feel disappointed, the king of scale Google playstore updates stats once a day
- CodesInChaos 6mo ago
  Not just stats. Configuration changes take around a day to take effect as well. Figuring out how to do authentication and permissions was such a pain. A half-assed integration with google cloud doesn't quite behave like the normal google cloud. Vague error messages. And every time you changed something you couldn't be certain your new setting was incorrect until you waited for an approximate day.
- dietr1ch 6mo ago
  Google is just using it's cozy position rather than pushing the forefront in most of their products

GorbachevyChase 6mo ago

Don’t forget that people involved in information technology procurement will pay very large sums of the company’s money to not have to understand anything.

NohatCoder 6mo ago
Don’t forget that people involved in information technology procurement will pay very large sums of the company’s money to not understand anything. FTFY

jayd16 6mo ago

Hmm backups seems like an important one.

cj 6mo ago
“Guys, we need to postpone our beta launch! We need another week to implement a backup strategy with point in time recovery!” You don’t need backups until you have customers.
- jayd16 6mo ago
  So go live without testing the backup in the beta at all?
  - cj 6mo ago
    Yes! Why build a backup process before you know you have data worth backing up.
    - jayd16 6mo ago
      Why go live if you don't have a reasonable expectation of users? Worrying about HA when you don't have customers that need it is one thing, but I wouldn't want to be in a place where I have to put a banner on the website asking users to please make a new account because we had an oopsie.
      - bombcar 6mo ago
        To be fair, there's a big difference between "we do periodic backups" and "we can restore to any millisecond since product launch.
        jayd16 6mo ago
        Sure, but it seemed to be that any backups at all were being called too frivolous.

operatingthetan 6mo ago

When I was a consultant we would plan out 25 piece cloud deployments for little pie in the sky apps that would never see more than 200 users. Everyone has been trained that 'cloud' means a lot of expensive moving parts and doesn't stop to plan their deployments beyond that.

echelon 6mo ago
Digital ocean has Kubernetes ffs. It's all of five minutes to write a deployment yaml and ingress and have literally anything on the web for a handful of dollars a month. I've written rust services doing 5k QPS on DO's cheapest kube setup. It's not rocket science. Serverless node buns with vite reacts are more complicated than this. Ten lines of static, repeatable, versioned yaml config vs a web based click by click deploy installer with JavaScript build pipelines and magical well wishes that the pathing and vendor specific config are correct. And don't tell me VPS FTP PHP or sshing into a box to special snowflake your own process runner are better than simple vanilla managed kube. You can be live on the web from zero in 5 minutes with Digital Ocean kube, and that's counting their onboarding.
- senko 6mo ago
  > It's not rocket science. Neither is "apt install caddy".
- bombcar 6mo ago
  It's like the old Herman cartoon - "Sure I could sell it to you for $50, but wouldn't you rather have a $5,000 painting?" People often don't like admitting that their project does not require a rocket and the associated scientists. Often even Kubernetes and friends is a bridge too far for what is realistically a single-page PHP app.
  - operatingthetan 6mo ago
    The other factor is 'not my money' syndrome. People who work at companies and don't have a real stake often don't feel bad about burning it for the sake of convenience.

Lalabadie 6mo ago

More and more, I'm seeing this issue with agents-based workflows as well. The training set is full (in quantity and in proportion) of codebases that are organized for very large teams, so that's what most prompted architectures lead to. In my case I'm seeing it a lot on the front-end side. My clients end up with single-page apps that install Shadcn, Tailwind, React, React Router, Axios, Zod, React Form and Vite, all to center a some input elements and perform a few in-browser API calls. It's a huge maintenance burden even before they start getting value out of it. These large setups are often a correct answer, but not the right one for the situation.

littlestymaar 6mo ago

> If this sounds like basic advice, consider there are a lot of people out there that believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices". I currently work in a small b2c startup with 200 active users (and targeting 5000 by the end of the year) and we're already paying AWS $1000/month on infra and it drives me crazy… And the deployment process is also over-engineered in a way that makes it hard to change anything (if you want to release without changing things too much that's fine, but changing the deployment process is already a nightmare). “But best practices”, “but scalability”, “but 99.999% uptime” …

shantnutiwari 6mo ago

"believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices"." Its worse than that. Thats how they are taught, and shamed if they dont "enterprise" their hello world app with 20 layers of failsafes...