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9 posts total
I’ve worked in the technology sector for 30 years and can confidently say that the right amount of technology to use to solve any problem is the absolute minimum you can possibly get away with while still being useful. Dumb is better than smart. Simple is better than complex. Small is better than large. Vendors will say the exact opposite because it allows them to sell you more stuff. And you definitely don’t want that (see above) Raaargh! Who dares approach my throne? #catsofmastodon (This is why I keep having to clean the cup warming shelf) I feel like subscriptions have generally made software quality worse. There was an argument that having to make paid upgrades to generate revenue to pay salaries put pressure on companies to change things that didn’t need changing, just to get that upgrade money, and subs reflected the holistic task of careful maintenance better. But in practice what’s often happened is the subscription props up bad decisions on product direction, because subs have to keep paying either way. Having a threshold that you have to cross to ask for a paid upgrade makes developers better at figuring out what their users *actually* want, because if they don’t want it enough to upgrade, that’s your revenue gone. Obviously it gets harder to keep doing that over time, but it does keep you honest. How many users are simply enduring your changes rather than rooting for them now that they have to keep paying just to use it? I think it promotes the bad product management I’ve increasingly seen Paid top search results should never be allowed, they are a distortion of utility and a security risk, exhibit A linked below. The fact that Apple allow paid search is a massive black mark against them, and as a customer I’d like to tell them how disappointed I am that the fact this keeps happening means they clearly don’t give a shit about their users, no matter what they say on stage. Tech companies: but people will PAY us just to be at the top of the search regardless of relevance! Me: yes and you should be saying “no” to that for precisely that reason you bastards Man, that period in the 90s when we had both late TNG and early DS9 coming out at the same time, we had no idea what a time it was Imagine, it’s 1994, you’ve just had All Good Things winding up TNG, DS9 is just getting into the Maquis period, and you just got Doom 2’s 4 player LAN multiplayer working for the first time. And the Internet still seemed like a great idea. Magical I don’t understand the attraction of being able to talk to computers using breezy casual conversational language; I’ve been telling these little digital bastards what to do for decades using extremely precise formalised language and they still get it wrong Oh no this toot has gone viral, my first on Masto 🫣 If you need me I’ll be under a blanket |
Gregory's Server
@sinbad 2/2 Having tried using expanded polystyrene, that contaminates everything around it. Wherever rodents can get to it it's spread widely, even under ground. Rodents WILL eventually get to everything. Touching a board of polystyrene while working with it breaks off chunks.
Better to build good drainage, wide roof overhangs and isolate the foundation with sand. Probably costs much less and no worry about spreading microplastics at your home.
Plastics are designed to fail and contaminate.
@sinbad nah man. Sort your array of integers using an LLM!
@sinbad I have this argument with other developers all the time.
Standard practice seems to be that if something is maxing a server out, you just throw more hardware at it and carry on. I hate that! It's so wasteful both in terms of tech and money, and just a lazy solution.
I prefer to optimise code to perform better, so that it can execute x times more in the same timeframe or use less memory etc. Decrease the server load, don't just throw more money at the server.
Should be the norm!