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Devine Lu Linvega's posts Post Back to profile
Devine Lu Linvega

We've been killing conversations about software with "That won't scale" for so long we've forgotten that scaling problems aren't inherently fatal.
web.archive.org/web/2019021320

29 May 2023 at 13:10 | Open on merveilles.town
7 comments
calcifer :nes_fire:

@neauoire thank you. Not only “not inherently fatal”, but sometimes prioritizing scalability is actively damaging

Sometimes small is the point.

Sometimes scale fundamentally changes the problem, so planning for scale ought to be planning to replace.

Often, “designing for scale” is a premature optimization.

29 May 2023 at 13:28 | Open on hackers.town
Adam Liss

@neauoire A really interesting read, thanks. Part of me feels it’s a useful skill to be able to take a situated solution and generalize it for the wider “web” audience. This is because historically you couldn’t make a living designing software for 100 people.

But now I’m imagining someone designing community software as a hobby, or even being employed as the community software designer. Definitely an interesting paradigm to consider.

29 May 2023 at 13:50 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
bitzero

@neauoire
Scaling indefinitely is an artificial/capitalist construct: in nature things do not scale at will, they reach a balance that's defined by how their ecosystem works.

If we force that balance upwards, we're - in the end - exploiting an ecosystem. And it won't end well.

Our ideal social ecosystem seems to be (used to be, was) the tribe, so it's natural to think (again) about developing (digital, this time) artifacts to be used by a specific community.

And it's more fun, too.

@neauoire
Scaling indefinitely is an artificial/capitalist construct: in nature things do not scale at will, they reach a balance that's defined by how their ecosystem works.

If we force that balance upwards, we're - in the end - exploiting an ecosystem. And it won't end well.

Our ideal social ecosystem seems to be (used to be, was) the tribe, so it's natural to think (again) about developing (digital, this time) artifacts to be used by a specific community.

29 May 2023 at 14:08 | Open on fosstodon.org
Leon

@neauoire the truth that corporations are gradually realising is that corporations also don’t scale

all of this is now easy and cheap and fast and sharp, IF YOU’RE SMALL.

if you’re big it’s even harder, even more expensive, slower and more blunt. none of the cool things are cool for you. everything makes everything creak. then the small ones come and they have their fast sharp easy free knives and so many and they’re screaming and laughing and the giants are trying to build a tall tower to stay safe but bits of walls keep collapsing into hordes of the small

that’s technology

@neauoire the truth that corporations are gradually realising is that corporations also don’t scale

all of this is now easy and cheap and fast and sharp, IF YOU’RE SMALL.

if you’re big it’s even harder, even more expensive, slower and more blunt. none of the cool things are cool for you. everything makes everything creak. then the small ones come and they have their fast sharp easy free knives and so many and they’re screaming and laughing and the giants are trying to build a tall tower to stay safe...

29 May 2023 at 14:10 | Open on peoplemaking.games
lorddimwit: not a typewriter

@neauoire

If you focus on how you’ll handle a million customers so hard you miss getting your first thousand users…

29 May 2023 at 15:43 | Open on mastodon.social
Gorse

@neauoire also when people talk about scaling they are often implicitly talking about scaling up, but things designed to scale up don't generally scale down very well.

29 May 2023 at 19:37 | Open on meow.social
antoine 📓
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