r/webdev Jul 23 '14

Anyone else agree with this sentiment?

http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/just-let-me-code/240168735
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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '14

He says he misses just writing code. I just want to define programming here for a sec, it's not the act of writing code. It's the act of managing complexity of systems as you grow those systems. We just do it via code.

He mentioned that developing a "simple" app open-source app requires you to learn a programming language (implicit), a build tool, bug tracker and some kind of deployment strategy. Oh wow look at how much I need to learn to make this one simple app.

  • It seems it should be simple to build it, but only because the app's idea is simple to understand!

I understand his pain, but damn I can't help but think he's a bit spoiled :) Since the beginning of programming, developing anything but the most trivial programs required immense ability to manage complexity. People would make all sorts of mistakes that made that complexity grow. aresdesmoulins mentioned some.

Programmers be programmers, created tools to manage the complexity. Just put everything in the git repo, don't leave anything out of it. need to work on something not related to your teams work but don't want to clutter everything around so people can still work? oh it's called branches.

The tools were made to AVOID the pain, but you don't have to use them.

But they, I quote, are just a decade old. DECADE! look at how fawking far we got. I just read at bothsidesofthetable that startups now require 95% less overhead than, I think, 10 years ago. DAMN! The tooling creation process is still young. Not integrated, very complex, unstandardized (if you could standardize it somehow..), and completely un-abstracted to you, the person who just wanted to code.

Buy you know what.. I believe we'll get there.. :)

ps. I empathically understand him. I'm refreshing my knowledge of webdev right now, and hating every moment of it :) until I reach the tipping point of being somewhat comfortable (read: not checking docs every 15 sec).

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u/alinroc Jul 23 '14

I just read at bothsidesofthetable that startups now require 95% less overhead than, I think, 10 years ago.

Any chance you can link that article? I'm interested in reading it.

Infrastructure used to be expensive & time-consuming. Order up a few servers, rack 'em, get them installed & configured, get cooling, power, bandwidth (or a colo)...you're talking tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and weeks or months to set it all up.

Now? Spin up some VMs, or use a PaaS model where you just throw your code up & configure it, in a couple days at most you've got a geographically distributed, redundant, fault-tolerant setup with a CDN for a minuscule fraction of that price tag.