The politics of Software Engineering

[trufun202]

A co-worker sent me this article yesterday, and I think it would make for a damn good discussion on these boards.

http://bit.ly/OVIs3s

Steve Yegge breaks down software developers into two categories: conservatives and liberals. After reading it, I think I definitely fall on the conservative side, although I do try to stay open to new standards and ways of thinking.

For example, my jaw hit the floor when I read the part about how Facebook's data storage is essentially a name/value pair stored in memory! (WTF!?) That goes against all good Normalized Database Design practices that have been burned into my brain for the past 10 years. But, after thinking about it, it has a lot of advantages, especially when you consider that they need something that performs well across so many platforms, for a BILLION users! The conservative side of me would never consider going down that path for a system so large, but there's a huge lesson to be learned here, imo.

How about you guys, which side of this political spectrum do you fall on?

[trufun202]

I think it would make for a damn good discussion on these boards.

heh, or not. :P

[qpHalcy0n]

FAR more liberal.

[dandymcgee]

By his definitions I am far more liberal as well.

I disagree with:

Bugs are not a big deal.

System flexibility can mean the difference between you getting the customer (or contract) vs. your competitor nabbing it instead. Security and safety risks in runtime production systems can be mitigated and controlled by logging, monitoring and auditing.

I am conservative when it comes to bugs (having dealt with a lot of software released much sooner than it should have been), although I agree that finding them all is impossible and often adds unnecessary delays to forward progress. I am extremely conservative with anything having to do with security, and believe it is absolutely ridiculous to be releasing production software with gaping backdoors. I'm a strong advocate of favoring intrusion prevention over intrusion detection, though detection is always a necessary secondary defense.

[TheBuzzSaw]

I read the whole thing, and I'm not sure where I stand. Everything is so circumstantial. My attitude shifts depending on the product: its urgency, technology, target market, etc.