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Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

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431 points thunderbong | 5 comments | 11 Jan 25 04:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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Scubabear68 ◴[11 Jan 25 15:49 UTC] No.42666623[source]▶
The best term for this is Cargo Cult Development. Cargo Cults arose in the Pacific during World War II, where native islanders would see miraculous planes bringing food, alcohol and goods to the islands and then vanishing into the blue. The islanders copied what they saw the soldiers doing, praying that their bamboo planes and coconut gadgets would impress the gods and restart the flow of cargo to the area.

The issue of course is the islanders did not understand the science behind planes, Wallis talkies, guns, etc.

Likewise, cargo cult devs see what is possible, but do not understand first principles, so they mimic what they see their high priests of technology doing, hoping they can copy their success.

Hence the practice of copying, pasting, trying, fiddling, googling, tugging, pulling and tweaking hoping that this time it will be just right enough to kind of work. Badly, and only with certain data on a Tuesday evening.

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lolinder ◴[11 Jan 25 16:22 UTC] No.42666875[source]▶
I don't think of this as being cargo cult development. Cargo culting has more to do with mimicking practices that have worked before without understanding that they only worked within a broader context that is now missing. It's about going through motions or rituals that are actually ineffective on their own in the hopes that you'll get the results that other companies got who also happened to perform those same motions or rituals.

What OP is describing isn't like this because the thing being copied—the code—actually is effectual in its own right. You can test it and decide whether it works or not.

The distinction matters because the symptoms of what OP calls the Makefile effect are different than the symptoms of cargo culting, so treating them as the same thing will make diagnosis harder. With cargo culting you're wasting time doing things that actually don't work out of superstition. With the Makefile effect things will work, provably so, but the code will become gradually harder and harder to maintain as vestigial bits get copied.

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godelski ◴[11 Jan 25 18:37 UTC] No.42667957[source]▶

  > only worked within a broader context that is now missing

  > because the thing being copied—the code—actually is effectual in its own right.
I don't understand how the second disproves the former.

In fact, a cargo cult works because there's the appearance of a casual linkage. It appears things work. But as we know with code, just because it compiles and runs doesn't mean "it works". It's not a binary thing. Personal I find that belief is at the root of a lot of cargo cult development. Where many programmers glue things together say "it works" because they passed some test cases but in reality code shouldn't be a Lovecraftian monster made of spaghetti and duct tape. Just because your wooden plane glides doesn't mean it's AC an actual plane

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scubbo ◴[11 Jan 25 19:01 UTC] No.42668122[source]▶
> a cargo cult works

But...it doesn't? That's the whole definitional point of it. If action A _does_ lead to outcome B, then "if we do A, then B will happen" is not a cargo cult perspective, it's just fact.

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1. foobarchu ◴[11 Jan 25 19:19 UTC] No.42668247[source]▶
For actual cargo cults, yes. Cargo Cult Development just used the name to invoke a comparison..when CCD is being practiced, devs are doing mystical steps because it's part of the incantation. They wouldn't keep doing them if the project then never worked.

Your definition is extremely unlikely to ever be practiced, because those developers would be fired for never getting anything working, and so it's not really a helpful one imo.

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2. lolinder ◴[11 Jan 25 19:31 UTC] No.42668329[source]▶
Concrete examples of what I think actually counts as cargo culting:

* Incorporating TDD because it's a "best practice".

* Using Kubernetes because Google does it.

* Moving onto AWS because it's what all the cool companies are doing.

The key thing that makes cargo cult development a cargo cult is that it's practices and rituals adopted without any concrete theory for what a bit is supposed to do for you in your context. You're just doing it because you've seen it done before.

This is different than small scale copypasta where people know exactly what they're trying to accomplish but don't take the time in any given instance to slow down and re-analyze why this bit of code looks the way that it does. They know that it works, and that's enough in that moment.

If we're going to go back to the original analogies that started it all, what you're describing as cargo cult would be more similar to islanders using machinery that was left behind without knowing how it works or how to maintain it. They don't strictly need to know that in order to gain actual concrete value from the machinery, but it would be better in the long term if they knew how to maintain it.

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3. godelski ◴[11 Jan 25 21:34 UTC] No.42669083[source]▶

  > For actual cargo cults, yes.
I'd say it is true for both. There's evidence that the actions cause the events. They correlate. It's why people start doing the actions in the first place. The exact reasoning you use, if it didn't "work" (appear to work) then the cult dies off pretty fast (and they do). Rationally irrational. It's good to be aware of because with high complexity systems it is easy to fall into these types of issues. Where you are doing A and you _believe_ are causing B, but there is no real relation.
4. scubbo ◴[12 Jan 25 00:08 UTC] No.42670017[source]▶
Right, yes, exactly this. Using a tool or process without full understanding of its operation, or how to use it in different ways, is not _ideal_ - but it's a different thing (similar! but different) from "doing something just because everyone else is doing it". A Makefile-copier might not know the full stack of concepts that undergird their working configuration - but they do know (in the "true justifiable knowledge" sense) that it _is_ a working configuration, and they know why they're adopting it.
5. scubbo ◴[12 Jan 25 00:11 UTC] No.42670035[source]▶
Hmm, fair, my definition certainly doesn't apply to CCD ("we do it because Google does it") - but I still maintain (as a child commenter elaborates) that there's a difference between "the reason I'm doing this is because other people do it" and "the reason I'm doing this is to achieve my given aim. I don't the exact functionality by which this leads to the aim being achieved, and I might not be able to modify this to achieve other aims - but I do know that it will get me where I want to go".

Neither is ideal - but, the latter is much less harmful IMO.