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Perhaps because I’m a government lobbyist and consultant formerly of FAANG with 24 years of experience trying to warn the Web industry that the exact thesis of the article is turning non-Web sectors against them? Couldn’t possibly be that, no, I have to be schizophrenic or a troll. The reason I know you don’t have schizophrenia close to you in your life is how willing you are to throw it at an anonymous commenter with a dismissive gesture toward “schizo”. You’d shut up if you knew what it’s like.

And you and “a proper response to accusing you of being a conspiracy means I’m being trolled when really I have no response” wonder why I change HN accounts like I change socks. Perhaps it’s because I hold this community in the utmost contempt precisely because of you and people like you, and I have zero interest in building a reputation among the harmful, toxic people who don’t realize how wrong they have it that I am working to excise from the conversation.

Take it or leave it. The good news for you is that you’re on the comfortable side of the argument so you will never get flagged or chastised by dang. Flagrantly accusing someone of psychological defect due to not liking their opinion is okay depending on the target and beliefs.

Perhaps my beef with your cadre is assuming that questioning its merits is AFS propaganda coming from someone who’s never set foot south of Embarcadero and assuming everyone who mentions principals has an axe to grind. You’ve painted a lovely caricature of who you think your opposition is, but you’re looking in entirely the wrong direction. Hint: Two FAANGs.

I don’t speak on the telephone with underhanded accusations, sorry.

Yes. If you don’t, and scp a Perl script to run under supervisord that meets the business requirement in three days instead of three months of microservices strategy, you are accused of being so hopelessly junior that you are unemployable.

I have witnessed that firsthand. Despite the anecdote being backend, I’d bet my 401(k) it’s the same up front.

Perhaps I disagree with the implied assumption that a big web site was the answer. I don’t have an answer for you beyond that, because step one is challenging the increasing belief that Big Web has computing figured out and we need not evaluate the decisions and foundational technologies and delivery models that have led to where we are. Step one is a mountain, as you can imagine, and it’s possible to start the conversation of climbing it with only a handful of ideas of what could be over it. Many smart people with quadruple my intelligence and foresight have toed these waters throughout computing’s history. They just lose to hype and marketing.

I realize that’s an underwhelming answer, but if we asked that everyone who disagreed with the status quo simultaneously proposed a perfect solution to fix it, we would be nowhere in any sense. I assure you that thinking about the answer to your question is a significant part of my life, and talking to people who use computers to shape that thinking is key. Government was largely responsible for setting the computing agenda and spurring all of the right technologies in the beginning, and I believe there is merit to revisiting that thinking rather than ceding computing to engineers on the West coast.

Rest assured that I am firmly in your camp, and I've been tirelessly making the argument to policymakers that Big Web is not the resident innovative force in computing any more, despite the Obama administration's rapid adoption of their ideals and philosophy to salvage Healthcare.gov. In both the legislative and executive branches I have found many, many sympathetic ears who have been burned by ballooning budgets to handle public cloud and all the concerns that came with it, which folks who advocate for cloud-first deployment tend to overlook when addressing people who genuinely don't know (concerns endemic to Big Web operation of cloud actually need explaining when addressing a sector that's never touched it).

There is a watershed coming where Big Web/FAANG will lose this mantle, and DevOps, half-baked Agile because nobody ever bakes it all the way, framework engineering, and a complete fundamental ball-dropping around security and exploitation of user data are rapidly ensuring it.

At some point, Big Web/FAANG and everybody delivering Web services of some kind got the idea that the Web was computing. I think the prototypical version of this thinking led to Rob Pike's observations about systems research in the early oughts. This forum tends to operate with that underlying assumption about the lens to view computing through no fault of anyone in particular, which is why I say that.

You jest, but there is an actual argument somewhere in this dumpster fire arguing that philosophy cannot explain the overall direction of technology, as evidenced by a particular software's choice of license and the underlying assumption that technology is "different" from any other human endeavor.

Nebulous philosophical arguments do explain things. Quite readily, actually.

What if 'advancements' were anything but? How would we know whether we're advancing a nascent engineering discipline in the best way possible? Is public cloud, an optimization for a certain calculus of engineering resources, the optimal form of computing delivery?

There's an underlying presumption about computing progress that has weaseled its way into your thinking, and the devil of it is that there are vanishingly few people willing to question it (can hardly blame them, given this thread).

Perhaps the people who treat CoreOS being called bullshit as dispositive of the entire thesis, and an inclusion worthy of disregarding the author and thinking of him in any way other than making an argument, aren't the intended audience.

Pull the snark out and there will remain any element of this post that kicks off a violent HN centithread that conveniently avoids the core issue. You know it, I know it.

It's a shot across the bow at the Kool-Aid which everyone here has imbibed to some extent. Of course they're going to shoot the messenger. When I clicked this thread I said out loud to my team, "oh, this should be good," and I hadn't even fathomed precisely how predictable the discussion would be. It's so far removed from any consideration that it lands something like explaining to an American that they're a subject of the Queen. It makes no sense to objectively review the thinking when you're inside, and buy, the thinking.

Bear in mind the livelihood of nearly everyone participating in this conversation is impacted by the situation being lamented. It's telling that CoreOS employees felt compelled to set the record straight and casually "float ideas".

It's further curious to note the difference in HN's reaction to an extremely salty and offensive post from, say, Linus Torvalds, versus this one. People are really bad at objectively setting aside their ideology and tone is a kind excuse to get out of having to genuinely think about whether the angry individual might have a point, and when it hits close to home, well. All bets are off.

You're 100% correct on your overarching point but the less kind interpretation is "the incentives of modern software engineering value complexity to artificially strengthen a software engineering job economy". The good news is that the more Big Tech screws the pooch with user data management and software engineering, the stronger an argument I have among very receptive ears in government circles to start thinking of Big Web/FAANG as hostile to responsible computing innovation, because they never really bought what Mikey sold them, and the troupe that followed Mikey to Washington didn't hang around to explain the downsides or long-term management needs of the current landscape.