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by the_mitsuhiko 176 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.
1 comments
worik 176 days ago
> 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

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the_mitsuhiko 176 days ago
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.

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0x3f 176 days ago
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.
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worik 174 days ago
> 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

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