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Software development topics I've changed my mind on after 10 years in
the industry

[800Pasted-]

Published 2025-02-03

    Four years ago I posted about the same topic.
    A kind email reminded me its time for another check in.

Things I've changed my mind on:

Things I now believe, which past me would've squabbled with:

  * Simple is not given. It takes constant work
  * There is no pride in managing or understanding complexity
  * Typed languages are essential on teams with mixed experience
    levels
  * Java is a great language because it's boring
  * REPLs are not useful design tools (though, they are useful
    exploratory tools)
  * Most programming should be done long before a single line of code
    is written
  * Frontend development is a nightmare world of Kafkaesque awfulness
    I no longer enjoy
  * Elegance is not a real metric
  * Good management is invaluable. (I went most of my career before
    seeing it done well)
  * DynamoDB is a good database (IFF your workload lines up with what
    it's offering)
  * Objects are extremely good at what they're good at. Blind
    devotion to functional is dumb.

Opinions I've picked up along the way

  * Engineering is mostly about communication
  * Never go full monad in Java.
  * The query planner is a cruel mistress
  * If I think something is easy, that's a sure sign I don't
    understand it.
  * You have to give younger devs room to explore and make mistakes
  * You have to actively invest in improving your soft skills (and
    investments pay back immediately)
  * Very few abstractions exist in general application development.
    Just write the code you need
  * Contrarily, library development is about abstractions. Spend time
    hunting for an algebra
  * ORMs are the devil in all languages and all implementations. Just
    write the damn SQL
  * The trouble with functional programming is functional programmers
  * Given a long enough time horizon, you'll deeply regret building
    on Serverless Functions
  * Types are assertions we make about the world
  * Distributed locking is still really hard for some reason
  * Formal modeling and analysis is an essential skill set
  * Isolation is the most important property of a good integration
    suite.
  * DynamoDB is the worst possible choice for general application
    development
  * Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet
    the rest where they are
  * Gradual, dependently typed languages are the future
  * You literally cannot add too many comments to test code (I
    challenge anyone to try)

Things I have not changed my opinion on:

  * People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other
    minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important
    things.
  * Code coverage has absolutely nothing to do with code quality (in
    many cases, it's inversely proportional)
  * Monoliths remain pretty good
  * It's very hard to beat decades of RDBMS research and improvements
  * Micro-services require justification (they've increasingly just
    become assumed)
  * Most projects (even inside of AWS!) don't need to "scale" and are
    damaged by pretending so
  * 93%, maybe 95.2%, of project managers, could disappear tomorrow
    to either no effect or a net gain in efficiency. (this estimate
    is up from 4 years ago)

We'll see which of these have flipped at year 15.

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