[catamorphismic]

> You seem to have a poor understanding of both entropy and markets.

And you're a bit assuming and rude. Your argument also isn't as bulletproof you want to make it sound. What is the argument here, anyway? There's no need to improve technique for an average programmer because an outlier system (Facebook) is written in a language commonly associated with poor programming practices, with some handwaving about markets and entropy sprinkled on top?

[tchaffee]

Sorry if I came off that way. I was in a rush on the way to an event and I thought I was just being honest about the weakness in his argument.

What's the argument here? That stakeholders have requirements that don't have to do with robustness like budget and deadlines and that your software has a shelf life and sometimes it's ok if it eventually breaks, just like cars and even the laptop I'm typing this on will. Is that an unreasonable perspective?

And Facebook is an outlier? Really? Even when we add Wordpress, Wikpedia, Flickr, MailChimp and a long list of the most successful websites in the world to that list?

[pdimitar]

> And Facebook is an outlier? Really? Even when we add Wordpress, Wikpedia, Flickr, MailChimp and a long list of the most successful websites in the world to that list?

Yes, FB is an outlier -- one out of million companies. Only 5-10 companies out of those millions made this current model work. So their existence and "success" proves absolutely nothing.

You have a strange understanding of the word "successful".

Facebook is certainly not "successful" because it neglects good tech. If anything, they rewrote PHP itself so as not to have to rewrite their customer-facing software. How is that for your "tech excellence is not important" argument? They rewrote the damned runtime and even added a compiler.

So please define what "successful" means to you. "A lot of people using FB" is a temporary metric, even if it lasts for decades. It's not sustainable per se. It relies on hype and network effect. These fade away.

@jacquesm's points are better argued than yours. Throwing words like "free market" and "entropy" does not immediately prove a point.

I will give you the historical fact that there are many throwaway projects but he's also right that the fallout from the tech debt they incurred is almost never faced by the original author. Throw in the mix the fact that many businessmen are oblivious on what do the techies do in their work hours exactly and one can be easily misled that technology perfection is not important. Seems that you did.

Final point: I am not arguing for 100% technical excellence. That would be foolish. We would still be refining HTTP and the WWW in general even today and internet at large would not exist. But the bean counters have been allowed to negotiate down tech efforts to the bare minimum for far too long, and it shows everywhere you look.

(My local favourite restaurant waiters' smartphone-like devices for accepting and writing orders are faulty to this day because some idiot bought a cheap consumer-grade router AND made the software non-fault-tolerant, being an everyday example.)

[tchaffee]

> Only 5-10 companies out of those millions made this current model work

Stats? Evidence? I mean hundreds of of thousands of companies use PHP and other forms of less than perfect tech.

Websites all over the world seems to get the job done even when JavaScript with all its warts is used. I like JS for the record, but it does have warts.

> even if it lasts for decades.

You're saying the same thing I said. That stuff breaks. That companies come and go in and out of fashion. I also think it's interesting that you're calling FB an example of tech excellence but saying it's going to fade away. Choose one?

> How is that for your "tech excellence is not important" argument?

I never made any such argument. Not even close. I only said quality is not the only requirement and might sometimes not be a requirement at all.

Most of the code I write is high quality. I put a lot of effort into code reviews too. I mentor more junior devs around quality. My original post is actually much more nuanced than you are claiming.

> Final point: I am not arguing for 100% technical excellence. That would be foolish. We would still be refining HTTP and the WWW in general even today and internet at large would not exist.

Exactly. That's in the spirit of my original post. Maybe re-read it to see that we mostly agree instead of making my position into something it really isn't?

[pdimitar]

> Stats? Evidence? I mean hundreds of of thousands of companies use PHP and other forms of less than perfect tech.

Oh, I meant companies at the scale of Facebook. There aren't too many of them, would you not agree?

> I also think it's interesting that you're calling FB an example of tech excellence but saying it's going to fade away. Choose one?

FB does a lot of open-source projects. Their devs are excellent. That doesn't mean that their main value proposition is not comprised of code of the kind you speak about. No need to choose one, both can coexist in such a huge company like FB.

> I never made any such argument. Not even close. I only said quality is not the only requirement and might sometimes not be a requirement at all.

Well alright then. I am not here to pick a fight, you should be aware that you came off a bit more extremist to me and a bunch of others than you claim. But these things happen, I can't claim your intent because of a few comments, that's true.

Me and several others' point is that quality plays a part bigger than what you seem to claim. I also knew many devs that decided they won't ask for permission to take the [slightly / much] longer road and this decision paid off many times over in the following months and years.

Sometimes businessmen simply must not be listened to. I can ship it next week alright. But I can skip a few vital details, namely that I did not take into consideration some stupid micromanagement attempts to teach me how to do my job ("nobody cares about this arcane thing you call 'error logger' or 'fault tolerance', just get on with it already!"). Such toxic work places should be left to rot, that is a separate problem however.