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1070 points dondraper36 | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.412s | source
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codingwagie ◴[] No.45069135[source]
I think this works in simple domains. After working in big tech for a while, I am still shocked by the required complexity. Even the simplest business problem may take a year to solve, and constantly break due to the astounding number of edge cases and scale.

Anyone proclaiming simplicity just hasnt worked at scale. Even rewrites that have a decade old code base to be inspired from, often fail due to the sheer amount of things to consider.

A classic, Chesterton's Fence:

"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”"

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1. dondraper36 ◴[] No.45069141[source]
The author is a staff engineer at GitHub. I don't think they haven't worked at scale
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2. ◴[] No.45069275[source]
3. rednafi ◴[] No.45070187[source]
Man, who hurt you?

I certainly don’t agree with everything Sean says and admit that “picking the most important work” is a naive thing to say in most scenarios.

But writing Python in production is trivial. Why would anyone lie about that? C is different OTOH. But just because you do a single config change and get paid for that doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone.

Also, staff at GitHub requires a certain bar of excellence. So I wouldn’t blindly dismiss everything just out of spite.

4. xerxes901 ◴[] No.45070215[source]
I personally know and have (tangentially) worked with the guy and none of what you’ve said is true.

> Look at his CV. Tiny (but impactful) features ///building on existing infrastructure which has already provably scaled to millions and likely has never seen beneath what is a rest api and a react front end///

Off the top of my head he wrote the socket monitoring infrastructure for Zendesk’s unicorn workers, for example.

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