[HN Gopher] Worst of Breed Software
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Worst of Breed Software
Author : facundo_olano
Score : 65 points
Date : 2026-01-10 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worstofbreed.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (worstofbreed.net)
| slater wrote:
| Nice to see L_tus N_tes still getting the hate it rightfully
| deserves!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| As long as a single person uses it, everybody will sympathize
| and hate together.
| cramcgrab wrote:
| Oracle? Is that you?
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| Genius!
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| Hilarious
| vikboyechko wrote:
| YAML spaces and apostrophes inside of single quote strings keeps
| me at night.
| HendrikHensen wrote:
| Just last week at my job we apparently converged on a Kubernetes
| deployment to host a static site, due to company security
| policies related to publicly exposing buckets to the internet...
| I died a little inside that day.
| Devasta wrote:
| Thats honestly the reason why most stuff is a web app these
| days. For desktop software you need to deal with IT security
| losers who recoil in horror at the idea of computers running
| software, and god help you if you need a port opened.
|
| Far better to shove everything through port 443 and redownload
| the software over and over until the end of time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > For desktop software you need to deal with IT security
| losers who recoil in horror at the idea of computers running
| software
|
| Windows will invariably tell them your software is not secure
| and block it.
|
| It doesn't matter what the software does, all that matters is
| that only your company runs it, so there isn't a million
| people out there with a copy.
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| > you need to deal with IT security losers who recoil in
| horror at the idea of computers running software
|
| Oh boy I have some bad news for thise IT security losers
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I have personally seen well meaning older devs saying that
| building on Microsoft Access with VBA is absolutely a viable
| greenfield stack in 2026 for small business.
|
| And we wonder why ageism exists in our industry. Not saying
| that's fair or all of it by any stretch, but ouch. It goes to
| show many of these worst practices are alive, well, and
| employable.
| anishgupta wrote:
| did you try making it a slop but ended up making UI good? fun
| website, seems we're back in the days of early 2000s when
| discovering new websites like this was fun
| SkyeCA wrote:
| SAFE requires more than being burnt with fire. If SAFE were an
| SCP it would be apollyon class.
| worik wrote:
| Need to save state for an HTML form?
|
| UUencode all 354 fields (64MB string) and put it in a hidden
| input field!
|
| Twice!!
| tormeh wrote:
| Templated YAML - and all YAML eventually becomes templated - is
| so bad it makes me yearn for XML. We had it bad and we made it
| worse.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I dunno why nobody used things like external includes in XML,
| but the worst parts of YAML were there too. (But at least, I
| think XML doesn't have macro expansions, so that's a win.)
| Dwedit wrote:
| Still hard to beat Syncronys SoftRAM.
| neilv wrote:
| Thank you. I've been doing distributed systems for years, when
| and to the degree appropriate, but this Worst Of Breed career
| guidance resource should help me position my skills, for current
| hiring priorities, to maximize my impact, towards enterprise
| objectives, going forward.
|
| But seriously, it's not only cynical careerists who are pumping
| resume keywords like it's a game everyone is playing, and
| everyone keeps quiet about RDD, etc., because nobody wants to
| spoil it for everyone. It's also people who are really into one
| of the keywords, and think it's the most important thing, or the
| only important thing.
|
| -- Past Case Study #1 --
|
| Context: interview with systems research PhD brand-new founders,
| after my cold outreach pitch as a "startup generalist" (I think I
| said it in the headline) who would complement the scientists.
|
| Me: (paraphrased) _You 're the experts in novel distributed
| systems research niche X, and I can't help you with that. What I
| can help with is all the other early startup work you'll need
| done, like bespoke infrastructure that works with X, Web
| consoles, mobile apps, some systems programming, product
| definition, project management, helping academic researchers and
| industry engineers work together, whatever needs to be done._
|
| PhD founder: (this might be an exact quote) _We need an expert,
| not a generalist._
|
| -- Past Case Study #2 --
|
| Context: interview with a mid-stage startup's CTO, who was hired
| for distributed systems expertise.
|
| Me: _I suspect that a Postgres server on a modest cloud server
| can handle the entire planet 's activity of X. And (since the
| company's recruiting materials emphasized bias for action, and
| rapid iteration) we could very quickly build and validate that
| empirically with simulated transaction load. Of course, in
| production, we'd set up Postgres with distributed failover, etc._
|
| CTO: _I going to need a severalth one-on-one interview with you,
| an offer is imminent, but it 's unclear whether you'll ever be
| allowed to talk with anyone else on the team, who you pointedly
| have still not yet met._
| sgarland wrote:
| I am personally offended by [0]. Maybe you should spend some time
| doing proper data modeling when you design your app, and maybe
| adding a new column _should_ be a painful exercise.
|
| Haphazard schema is the quickest way to develop terrible
| performance, loss of referential integrity, and insane queries.
| Well, outside of sticking everything into a JSON column.
|
| 0: https://worstofbreed.net/patterns/schema-bureaucracy/
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