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Yes, this "boring = good!" trope is frequently weaponized to shut down people's voices. Happened to me. One thing I realized is these blogposts are consumerist

Yes, this "boring = good!" trope is frequently weaponized to shut down people's voices. Happened to me. One thing I realized is these blogposts are consumerist. They talk about "Python" and "MongoDB". Very little about underlying ideas like "algorithms", "computational paradigms" or "expressive power". And they have hypersimplified plans about "three innovation tokens". Instead of "risk analysis" or "evaluate tradeoffs". One company shut me down with such blogposts... while it let devs run amok with an architecture which did n^2 (more?) network calls... where each call transfered one RDBMS row at a time. It dragged down the intelligence of everyone who really knew better; they spent "sprints" trying to find micro-optimizations, knowing exactly that the system was fundamentally ridiculous. So I spent a weekend reimplementing it in the Scary Fun Language. Because it was my weekend dammit, and Embracing Boredom damaged my brain too much. Scary Fun was the only way to start mending it. And it succeeded. So of course the first order of business was to rewrite it in the Embrace Boredom language.

duderific 12y ago
> where each call transfered one RDBMS row at a time. Surely this is not the fault of boring technology, but rather poor design. You can easily make the same mistake using the latest and greatest.
- jfb 12y ago
  I think it's more nuanced; certain technologies afford certain designs. There really are differences in languages, and those differences expose users to different misbehaviors -- or the dual, to different optimizations.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  I think the point the parent was making was that using terminology like "scary" or "boring" for technological choices is fundamentally an abrogation of responsibility. It's cargo cult programming. Good programming, intentional engineering, is one where people are cognizant of the risks and other tradeoffs of different languages, frameworks, designs, etc. It shouldn't be surprising that an organization that opted out of a discussion on technology stacks would also ultimately opt out of discussing algorithmic complexity as well, it speaks to a lack of sophistication and maturity at the institutional level.
jacques_chester 12y ago
You're actually demonstrating the point of the blog post, which is that the Boring RDBMS had a well-understood failure mode that "everyone who really knew better" would've recognised.

duderific 12y ago

> where each call transfered one RDBMS row at a time. Surely this is not the fault of boring technology, but rather poor design. You can easily make the same mistake using the latest and greatest.

jfb 12y ago
I think it's more nuanced; certain technologies afford certain designs. There really are differences in languages, and those differences expose users to different misbehaviors -- or the dual, to different optimizations.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
I think the point the parent was making was that using terminology like "scary" or "boring" for technological choices is fundamentally an abrogation of responsibility. It's cargo cult programming. Good programming, intentional engineering, is one where people are cognizant of the risks and other tradeoffs of different languages, frameworks, designs, etc. It shouldn't be surprising that an organization that opted out of a discussion on technology stacks would also ultimately opt out of discussing algorithmic complexity as well, it speaks to a lack of sophistication and maturity at the institutional level.

jacques_chester 12y ago

You're actually demonstrating the point of the blog post, which is that the Boring RDBMS had a well-understood failure mode that "everyone who really knew better" would've recognised.