Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe programming

Re:Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe prog... by hunter23 on Sunday January 14, 2018 @03:36AM (#16143346)

Yes exactly! The point is you don't build a scalable app until you have a scalable business idea. The first iterations of a startup are about testing different ideas, not about building sustainable architecture.

Unless you are building a technical work of art, it's all about finding the right product.

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Re:Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe prog... by Retric on Sunday January 14, 2018 @08:09AM (#16144106)

Some ideas can't scale.

Ex: If your building a game with N players that can see each other walking around then that's N^2 updates.

Now, plenty of ways of dealing with that problem, but it's something to keep in mind even if you solution is not yet worth implementing.

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Re:Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe prog... by rbanffy on Sunday January 14, 2018 @04:38AM (#16143494)

Some decisions need to be made early on. You may be fine with MySQL, but you need to think about decoupling different parts of the process and to think about the implications of delays on the interfaces from the start, even if they aren't there.

Most likely you'll never reach Google scale, but, you'll be happy you did that as the application grows more complex and you don't have to test every part of it for each tiny change.

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