A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

Re:A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools by crankylinuxuser on Saturday February 29, 2020 @01:15PM (#22451989)

The problem is that the devs are smart and stupid at the same time.

They're smart when discussing code complexity, callbacks, functions, APIs and the like. I've seen this time and again where many devs would get together to flesh out a chunk of a project and work together rapidly for the best way forward, along with nearly all edge cases. This is not simple or stupid in any sense of the words.

However they are also stupid when it comes to a larger view of what they work on. Perhaps myopic is a better term. I've seen devs write code expecting a database server has commodity access to the internet. I've seen devs include untested, unpatchable by WSUS software in generated system images. I've seen devs not give a second thought about logging, monitoring, error handling and more sysad level things, as it was outside of scope.

I trust devs in their domain, which is a narrow view of code. They've demonstrated they cannot be trusted with systems.

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Re:A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools by Tainnor on Saturday February 29, 2020 @05:40PM (#22453709)

You said those are smart people. If they don't understand certain aspects that are relevant, why not try to teach them the importance of it (e.g.: here's what matters when we log, and why; if necessary, teach them how to monitor the system using logs so they see the importance firsthand). If they are truly smart and professional, they should be able and especially willing to learn about it.

But yeah, I think that as an industry we overemphasise (both in hiring and in our weird pseudo-meritocratic community) raw coding skills and underemphasise big picture thinking, communication, collaboration, etc.

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