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Maybe this is true in the ivory pillars of academia, but in the real world a large amount of technology is simply worthless - the world would be a better place
by protonfish 13y ago
Maybe this is true in the ivory pillars of academia, but in the real world a large amount of technology is simply worthless - the world would be a better place if it didn't exist: Dead code that was never cleaned up, encapsulations of encapsulations of encapsulations, code that solves nothing but to express the astronaut architecture of a dogmatic developer, code based on poorly communicated specifications, code that has so many bugs as to consider it worthless...
To suggest "everything is a tradeoff" is a sort of moral relativism. It implies that all code has value and is a shield for criticism to even the poorest work.
- btilly 13y agoThe fact that everything is a tradeoff does not mean that incompetent developers in the real world made a reasonable tradeoff.
- Double_Cast 13y agoI don't think the intention was to imply "everything is equal". I think the intention was closer to "everything has a cost" or "you can't simultaneously optimize for everything". AKA the Project Management Triangle.
- protonfish 13y agoI realize what they were trying to say and I agree with it; they just stated it poorly. Is it that hard to not use the word "everything?" I suppose it does not make as good of a headline. If you are going to give advice, you need to consider how your advice can be misused. There exists techniques and technologies that are measurably superior to others. Knowing how to recognize them is a critical skill for a competent developer.
- jiggy2011 13y agoYou could go in and clean up or refactor all of that bad code, or you could use that time for something else. So it's still a trade-off.