Ask HN: How do you cope with ever increasing complexity of software ecosystems?

7 points by raghava 5 years ago | 8 comments

How do you cope with the accelerated increase in complexity of the software ecosystems?

Everyday a new tech, a new framework, a new tool, a new language.

Particularly in the Cloud world, the complexity is just shooting up like crazy.

For any engineer who wants to stay competent, doesn't it feel like too much of a stretch - to get shit done and keep up with everything that's changing around always?

How are you folks managing it? Any tips and tricks for those finding this a daunting thing?

Please share your views! Thanks!

one2know 5 years ago |

None of it is necessary. A 20 year old LAMP stack with a few hosts will get your business to $1 billion dollars ARR. People pushing the complexity are trying to fleece big corporations and executives that don't know better.

Chyzwar 5 years ago |

Be curious and read the docs. At some point everything will become similar.

Things I do (it might not work for everybody)

  - Watch conferences talks Coding Tech, ConfFreaks, ElixirConf even CppConf
  - Read issue tracker of projects I like: Typescript, webpack, node.js
  - Side projects and open source contributions
  - Hacker News and email subscriptions: React Status, Dev.to

It is harder to find time when you have family but still doable.

codingdave 5 years ago |

I do not find that I need to keep up with everything. I choose a tech stack, work it for a few years, and then go out and catch up on what is new. Unless you are doing some kind of consulting where you need to be building greenfield apps with the bleeding edge every month, keeping up isn't as critical as it might seem.

jugjug 5 years ago |

I focus at least one third of my learning time on things that dont change, such as principles behind Hickey’s Simple Made Easy, Hamming’s You & Your Research, Brooks’ Mythical Man Month, functional programming, and technical things like SQL, shell.

New tech is a often a container around those, making it easy to grasp it.

Also, new tech also dont have such community & ecosystem around it as older tech, so I keep it on the radar, but dont use in production immediately. Focusing on boring technology, with a spark of novelty where needed.

adam_ung 5 years ago |

I focus on technologies which have seen a steady growth over the years, like FreeBSD. The benefit is that the knowledge you obtain tends to stay relevant for a long time.

the_only_law 5 years ago | |

Just curious: unless you’re working at Sony or Netflix how often do you see FreeBSD outside of hobbyist work?

adam_ung 5 years ago | | |

Well, I use FreeBSD on my personal laptop and work at a company which uses FreeBSD for its appliances. That’s true, FreeBSD’s market share is tiny in comparison to Linux, but it seems like there are still a number of companies looking for FreeBSD developers.

It’s also reassuring that even though FreeBSD ecosystem gets a lot less attention than Linux, it still enables companies like New York Internet to be one of the most reliable hosting companies out there (https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2020/12/02/most-reliable-...).

tubularhells 5 years ago | | |

Anecdote: The first version of freeBSD was released in 1993. This year they have celebrated 27 downloads.