The Path of Madness
a day ago
- #productivity
- #software development
- #tech culture
- Hacker News is criticized by tech elites but remains popular due to occasional valuable information.
- Oracle's database development is described as nightmarish with 25 million lines of C code, reliant on flags and macros, and a slow, test-heavy edit-compile-run loop.
- A thought experiment illustrates how fast-growing tech companies can fall into a trap of slow test suites, leading to costly cloud parallelization and complex fixes.
- The solution is to fix root problems rather than applying clever patches, emphasizing the importance of fast edit-compile-run loops for productivity.
- Postgres and Go are highlighted as examples of fast development environments, with Postgres running tests in seconds compared to Oracle's 30 hours.
- The author's company, Crunchy, maintains fast test suites in Go and Ruby, demonstrating that efficient development is achievable.
- A tangent discusses the TV adaptation of 'Wheel of Time' and Brandon Sanderson's involvement in related online discussions.