Comment by the_mitsuhiko
3 days ago
> If a user request is hitting that many things, in my view, that is a deeply broken architecture.
If we want it or not, a lot of modern software looks like that. I am also not a particular fan of building software this way, but it's a reality we're facing. In part it's because quite a few services that people used to build in-house are now outsourced to PaaS solutions. Even basic things such as authentication are more and more moving to third parties.
> but it's a reality we're facing.
Yes. Most software is bad
The incentives between managers and technicians are all wrong
Bad software is more profitable, over the time frames managers care about, than good software
The reason we end up with very complex systems I don't think is because of incentives between "managers and technicians". If I were to put my finger to it, I would assume it's the very technicians who argued themselves into a world where increased complexity and more dependencies is seen as a good thing.
Fighting complexity is deeply unpopular.
At least in my place of work, my non-technical manager is actually on board with my crusade against complex nonsense. Mostly because he agrees it would increase feature velocity to not have to touch 5 services per minor feature. The other engineers love the horrific mess they've built. It's almost like they're roleplaying working at Google and I'm ruining the fun.
> Fighting complexity is deeply unpopular.
Fighting complexity is literally the job of a computer programmer
It is a hard job, and made much harder by the (usual) disconnect between management and us