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Comment by whatshisface

4 years ago

>Why're we throwing away years of learning to build unstable, complex and inaccessible applications?

1. Smart people seek out difficult problems.

2. Difficult problems drive the creation of complex, niche tools, that bear cultural associations with the smart people who made and use them.

3. People who want to be smart seek out complex, niche tools.

10 comments

whatshisface

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delusional  4 years ago

I think you're somewhat right, but it's not the whole story. There's another pipeline that goes something like:

1. Technical software problems are more fun than difficult product problems

2. Programmers would rather solve fun problems

3. Programmers end up creating technically elaborate machines to solve simple (buy annoying) product problems

  • midrus  4 years ago

    As an ex-member of a team who used react, redux, typescript, observables, epics, thunks, custom hoome-grown validation libraries, websockets and elixir deployed in two different microservices to build a... signup wizard... I can confirm this.

    I proposed to build it in Rails (which we already had, but was the "old monolith we're migrating away from") and I almost get crucified.

  • whatshisface  4 years ago

    That's a story I'm familiar with, but I am not actually aware of any (major, commonly used) tools that were created out of boredom. I only see instances of people using existing tools when they are not necessary out of boredom.

gonehome  4 years ago

I think it might be simpler?

The more complex products are the only ones that typically have any documentation or up to date learning resources.

You want to learn how to build a thing and this is the only thing that really exists, is up to date, and works.

It may not be the right tool, but for someone new it's impossible to tell what the right tool is and people online are stereotypically obtuse and about anything tool related.

heyitsanewacco  4 years ago

lmao yeah pretty much. I'm moving from a low code shop to Node/Vue because I can't keep people. They all want to pad their resume, so I'm going to build at 2x the cost just so I can keep the projects going.

  • whatshisface  4 years ago

    The level of Node/Vue isn't padding your resume in this industry, it's having a resume. Padding your resume would be... I don't know, Elm?

ksec  4 years ago

Smart and YOUNG, seek and try to conquer complexity, pushing open The Gate of Truth. Only to be completely consumed and burned by it.

There are abundance of smart people. Wisdom, has and possibly always will be in short supply.