I keep reading this online but never encounter it in real life. People I work with and for like simple solutions that don't add complexity. It saves them time and money. I really wonder how is it that some people seem to encounter this toxic mentality so much that they assume it is universal. Is it a FAANG/US culture thing where everyone acts based on corrupted incentives?
It's the definition of simple that's the problem. For any definition of simplicity you might have, someone has an equal and opposite definition.
Take these two alternatives:
class UserService {
PostgresDatabase db;
}
class UserService {
IDatabase db;
}
There are some coworkers who will veto the first example for being too complex, because it brings Postgres (and its state and connections and exceptions and mappings) into the scope of what otherwise could have been a service concerning Users.
There are some coworkers who will veto the second example for being too complex, because Postgres is all you use for now, and if you really need to use a second database, you can change the code then (YAGNI). Also the Interface gives you a pointless indirection that breaks IntelliSense so you can't just 'click-through' to follow the code flow.
I agree with your comment, but I disagree a both the example opinions... complex is the discussion :D
I heard something that helps better framing those discussions, use "familiar" instead of "simple".
An highly abstract way to access a database table, with ORM for example, can be simple because everyone is expecting it and knows how to do all tasks (changing schema, troubleshooting, managing transactions, etc.).
Doing userService.pgSql("select ....") in the same way can be simple.
I recently had a performance review at a FAANG. One engineer on my team has spent the past 3 years working on a complex infrastructure migration which involved about 20 engineers. The migration was completed last year and saved the company some opex costs.
I on the other hand spent 3 weeks optimizing our core service and reduced 2x the opex costs of the large complex 3 year migration.
In my yearly review my manager acknowledged my impact, but said I need to solve more complex problems to get to Staff Engineer. I protested saying that my 3 weeks of work had a larger impact than 20 engineers over 3 years, but he told me that is just how it works.
Me too, everyone around me is into board games, video games, nerdy movies etc and they always assume I'm into them too. It always sucks when I reveal I don't like these things and you see the enthusiasm going off their faces :/
If you're paid by the hour, then does it really matter if you have to refactor stuff? If it takes a long time to do then it'll be more expensive for your employer.
Does the project manager get paid more by the hour to refactor a house than to build one?
Cool, can you provide some more info on how you got in to this, recommended dabbling strategy and what sort of ROI you're getting from time invested? I have been getting in to botany pretty heavily already.
I've always had a passion for carnivorous plants and it was inevitable that I would end up doing tissue culture by keeping on digging deeper in the obsession.
The biggest ROI is fulfilling my childhood dream of having a ton of my favourites rare plants. Then I sell my extra ones on my webshop, but it doesn't make that much money as I am not focusing on expensive varieties, just the ones I like.
You can check out plants in jars on YouTube, or use a LLM to get into it. Some LLMs might not want to answer you because they think you're trying to do something dangerous... Claude has been flagging a lot of my questions.
Ahh, succulents! Happened upon a succulent show around 2 years ago. Wow. Never imagined how many oddball shapes were out there, it's a real scene. Some of those combo monstrosities belong in sci-fi! I can see how people get in to it.
Exactly my experience too, to the point that I kinda ended up only using DDG for its bang features and never really do real searches with it... It's especially bad if I want local results for my country in my language.
I feel like the only reason I use Obsidian is because of the "real time" markdown editor. If I could have this in Zed (not split view between source and render) I would probably not used Obsidian anymore.
Definitely this, my hobby is already filled with a ton of sloppy vibe coded apps that all do the same thing very badly with awful UI/UX. They all ask for a monthly subscription and, surprise, nobody uses them.
Meanwhile the hand crafted app that does the same thing gets put in the same bucket as the AI slop ones and is ignored.
I roll my eyes every time I see a coworker post a very a long message full of emojis, obviously generated by a LLM with 0 post editing. Even worse when it's for social communication such as welcoming a new member in the team. It just feels so fake and disingenuous, I might even say gross.
I don't understand how they can think it's a good idea, I instantly classify them as lazy and unauthentic. I'd rather get texts full of mistakes coming straight out of their head than this slop.
Some people legitimately have no idea that others recognize and are offput by llm output.
Also, i know a lot of non-native English speakers that use AI tools to "correct things". Because of the language barrier these people especially are less likely to ever be able to recognize the specific llm tone that precipitates.
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