This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz
by Dmitry Dvoinikov.
Original Post: We have lost
Feed Title: Things That Require Further Thinking
Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThingsThatRequireFurtherThinking
Feed Description: Once your species has evolved language, and you have learned language, [...] and you have something to say, [...] it doesn't take much time, energy and effort to say it. The hard part of course is having something interesting to say.
-- Geoffrey Miller
I used to know every file on my computer. I used to open every single file in a hex editor to see what's inside. Actually, this is still my first reaction to understand what a file is.
In the programs that I wrote I used to know every line, every character even. Then they got bigger, but I still knew every file. Then they got bigger yet but at least I knew all the dependencies not only by name but by virtue.
Now a static single page web site in React comes with over 100000 files, some of which, as you know, are left pads and hot pockets and there are all new contests. Such complexity is beyond anyone's reach. Even the authors find it overwhelming.
We have lost the understanding of what's happening.
Today's software development is not engineering as such. Given the quality of the outcome it is not even a professional activity. Software development has become a recreational game for the young. The target audience for the programmer became not the users but other programmers. Stackoverflow and Github saw to that. This is now the most active social network in the world.
To impress one's peers it's no longer necessary to build some quality software. Bah ! You can't even tell what quality means. But to ride bicycle without hands - that's something ! And if you could do it blindfolded ! And backwards !
And so we see thousands of exercises in making things backwards. Without understanding the purpose or the reason, pick up a new tool, play for a month then move on to a new stimuli. Worse yet if it leaves behind another backwards-backwards-backwards-backwards tool. This adds another layer of useless and not understood complexity and provides positive feedback to the loop.
I remember well one day in 2005, when something out of the ordinary happened. At the time I was working under supervision of a great software engineer. He was always talking about "architecture", you know. Architecture this, shmarchitecture that. Back then I didn't understand much of it, despite having already worked as a programmer for some 8-9 years. And then I was sitting in a conference room alone thinking how to organize a UI for some application and it dawned on me. I knew what architecture was, not burdened with details, my mind went to the next level, it was almost like I could fly. That I could not forget or unlearn, and I'm happy that this knowledge is with me, because it would not have happened today.
Today I would have just be dabbling in a Sea Of Complexity, pleasing my mind with details. May be I would have been happy about that, who knows.
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