Re: [9fans] Thrift RPC

[Uriel <uriel99@gmail.com>]

The software industry is the ultimate recreation of Sisyphus' curse.

uriel

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Daniel Lyons<fusion@storytotell.org> wrote:
>
> On Aug 12, 2009, at 9:56 PM, erik quanstrom wrote:
>
>> if we're going back there, just take me out back and shoot me now.
>> i want to remember some progress in computer science.
>
>
> The principal joy I derive from using Plan 9 (and I am quite new) is that it
> is so well architected. By day I am a web developer (when I'm employed) and
> I am just thoroughly sickened by the industry. It seems to me that at some
> point, the cool guys that beat me up in middle school somehow insinuated
> their way into technology and have hijacked everything. Currently they seem
> to be proceeding to reinvent the same things over and over again, on top of
> their own reinventions, for no particular gain except to make new jargon and
> get their name on the latest version. It's hard to even maintain a portfolio
> of work one's done when the lifespan of a website is dwindling to one year
> or six months. And that certainly reduces the incentive to give it
> everything you've got and make something really good.
>
> I was curious about ICE, because it seemed like they actually took CORBA and
> said, what would this look like if it were implemented by engineers rather
> than a committee? But I don't think the problem facing the world is "how do
> I integrate all these languages, possibly over the network?" but rather "how
> do I minimize all of this fucking complexity and still get things done?"
> XML-RPC and SOAP are answers to stupid questions, which is why we have REST,
> but the joke is that none of the technologies that it relies on are even
> implemented enough by their own specifications such that it can really be
> used. It strikes me as ludicrous that you can go make a new Rails app and
> have to write by hand (or find someone's plugin) to create a login system
> for you, which won't even happen on the HTTP level (which supports it), or
> the RDBMS level (which also supports it), or the OS level (which again
> supports it.) How many times do we have to write username/password logins
> before we're done and we can fucking can move on? It's not like anything is
> really different at any of these levels, just the way the bytes get handed
> around. Then you have to be sure to use a database abstraction layer,
> because everyone seems to have forgotten that the database *is* an
> abstraction layer—this fact got lost in the shuffle as it became too complex
> for anyone to really understand completely. Yet nobody seems to be worried
> that the same thing might happen to their little project as they pile code
> upon code and it slowly swells up just like everything that came before or
> that it depends on. Before long, they need an abstraction layer for their
> abstraction layer! Then the schmucks come along and complain about
> performance and demand to be taught every dirty trick to take their barely
> useful code and remove all the clarity from it in the name of a performance.
> Software is cancer.
>
> I don't know how long you've been a programmer, Erik, but I'm sure it's far
> longer than I. From my perspective, no, there is no progress in computer
> science, we're spending all our time trying to climb out of the same muddy
> hole we've been in since Dijkstra was a newlywed and Knuth was writing for
> MAD Magazine. CS has such advanced amnesia that it can't remember what
> prompted the last question it was asked and so it just repeats the question
> to itself over and over, never really aware that it isn't an answer. We dig
> and dig but the problem only gets worse because digging doesn't get you out
> of a muddy hole.
>
> The things that keep me going are the pleasure I get from knowing a lot of
> obscure stuff, talking to intelligent, knowledgeable people such as comprise
> this mailing list, and (oddly) writing SQL. I wouldn't say I have much hope
> for the industry in general unless there's some sort of major restructuring.
> I try not to make that my problem and instead share the things I know about
> with people I think might benefit. So consider this the opposite of being
> flamed. I feel exactly the same way you do. I hope that in some time I will
> be doing as much for the good as you and others on this list that carry the
> Plan 9 torch and endure my stupid questions (and now my rants.)
>
> —
> Daniel Lyons
>
>
>