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by jongjong 923 days ago
> It's easy to say "don't do that" but shit happens: large legacy codebases, social factors, and individual incentives of backend and frontend teams with deadlines.

I don't buy this argument. Imagine if an airplane manufacturer had the same philosophy. "We can't just substitute that component because it wouldn't fit the existing frame... Oh but wait, we can't just change the frame or the new component to make it fit because of social factors within the engineering team. Let's just tack it on as originally planned and then work around the issue by implementing a complex solution in the software to make up for the structural design flaw.."

That's basically the Boeing 737 MAX story. We know the result of that philosophy.

1 comments

Software isn’t nearly as expensive as building airplanes, and the cost of being wrong is infinitely lower. That’s why we build it fast, and iterate quick. It’s not a good comparison.