[HN Gopher] Stupid Light Software
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Stupid Light Software
Author : pcr910303
Score : 43 points
Date : 2020-11-28 12:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.arp242.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.arp242.net)
| brundolf wrote:
| I once heard someone say (paraphrased), "To some programmers RAM
| is like that couch in your grandmother's living room, with a
| plastic cover, that nobody's ever actually allowed to sit on."
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| As an aside "Stupid light" hiking is a great term for it. I
| recall a case where a British hiker died a long and lonely death
| in our country when he broke a leg a few days into a 4 week
| journey. Locals had encouraged him go take a locator beacon (due
| to the rough terrain and remoteness), but he'd refused, because
| it weighed too much.
| makach wrote:
| This article, light, but not stupid light(!) cast a brilliant
| perspective on software development. Good read! Two thumbs from
| me!
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Is "stupid light hiking" really a proper comparison. In the case
| of hiking, the hiker is making the choices and the hiker is the
| one who will have to live (or die) with them. In the case of
| software, too often it is a commercially-oriented application
| developer making the choices and it is a different person, a
| user, who must live with them. The hiker has control over her
| choices. The user has no control over the application developer's
| choices.
|
| In some ways, the best programs are the ones I write for own use
| only. I know the user better than anyone and I have full control
| over the design choices. Obviously, choosing not to use someone
| else's software is ineffective as a means of controlling someone
| else's design choices. Perhaps unsolicited "advice" found in
| blogs might have some influence though.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I feel there is an obvious missing comparision -- I'm often not
| going on a life-or-death hike, I'm just going on a pleasent
| afternoon walk with friends.
|
| The friend who brings all the serious hiking equipment, and
| even worse expects everyone else to bring such stuff, is really
| annoying in that situation.
| t0astbread wrote:
| If the developer is marketing directly to the user then the
| user has a choice: They can decide if they wanna use the app.
| If the developer is marketing to a third party that is forcing
| the user to use the app (e.g. employers) then the user is
| powerless. The only exception is if the app locks the user in
| in some way.
| Geminidog wrote:
| Totally new information. Libraries and databases for general use
| cases can be bloated and bad when compared to rolling your own
| code that's specifically for your domain. This is genius level
| thinking. I had no idea. Nobody on the face of the earth ever
| knew about this concept until this article appeared on HN, so
| this is absolutely revolutionary and will likely change the
| industry forever.
|
| He gave it a metaphorical name from hiking too. "Stupid Light"
| and I'm just blown away at the incredible Einstein level
| imagination here.
| skipnup wrote:
| What
| jlelse wrote:
| I wrote a reply to this on my blog
| (https://jlelse.blog/links/2020/11/stupid-light-software):
|
| With software I most often go from "heavy" to "light". First, I
| try to realize the features I need and then I try to optimize
| where possible. First, I will use many libraries and after I got
| everything working, I will see if I really need all those
| libraries and may replace a whole library with a custom more
| simple implementation that still fits the needs.
|
| A case for "stupid light" software is probably trying to use a
| static website when an optimized dynamic site is much more
| appropriate. You start to over-engineer a complex build workflow,
| when all that's really needed to speed up a site is better
| caching.
|
| I have some experiences especially related to the database point.
| When I developed Android apps, I tried to use flat text files
| too. But recently I discovered how awesome SQLite is. In some
| cases flat files are great, but especially when you need to parse
| those files or retrieve specific information from them, SQLite
| might be better than flat files. But in many cases SQLite could
| replace complex PostgreSQL or MariaDB databases, especially when
| concurrent writing isn't needed.
| twic wrote:
| If i am ever in a situation where i am considering SQLite, i will
| try to use DuckDB instead. It's a similar weight (the all-
| inclusive JARs are 6.9 MB for SQLite and 8.7 for DuckDB), it also
| stores a database in a single file, it's different in many ways,
| but for me, the killer feature is that it uses the PostgreSQL SQL
| syntax (and parser). This should make it very easy to migrate
| from DuckDB to PostgreSQL if that becomes necessary.
|
| I currently work on a project based around SQLite, which suffers
| from that fact. Migrating it to PostgreSQL would be great, but
| would involve a lot of tedious work.
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