VertigoApr 21, 2020

There are relatively few technologies that I adamently refuse to work with in the IT industry.

1. Perl. Fucking hate it. Yes, you *can* write maintainable code with it; and some libraries are surprisingly pleasant to use. Emphasis on "some". That leaves *most* in the category of "out of the question." I simply refuse to work a job where I know ahead of time I'll be using Perl.

Show threadVertigoApr 21, 2020
2. Javascript in general, and Node.js in particular. Fucking hate it. It was a significant contributor to my burn-out when I worked at Rackspace.
Show threadVertigoApr 21, 2020
3. **ANYTHING** involving the use of MQTT. Full #*@#%^ing stop. MQTT solves **NO NEW PROBLEMS**, and only serves to create new problems. I'm screamed about this enough here already.
Show threadVertigoApr 21, 2020
4. Related to 3, **ANYTHING** involving Google IoT Core. Just about unusable for technical support on field-deployed units. Worse, a unit will be happily processing telemetry from field units, until it stops. YOU HAVE NO INSIGHT AS TO WHY. Only demonstrably correct work-around so far is to just restart the fucking software on the IoT device. NOTE: I'm *NOT* talking about reconnecting to the MQTT server. I'm talking about dropping the process dead with a sigkill and rerunning it.
Show threadVertigoApr 21, 2020
Ooh, what's that? You want support to figure out what's happening that's causing IoT core to suddenly disconnect your sorry ass? Pay up, bub; that's an additional several hundred dollar a month support contract, because we know our shit is so broken, the only way we can legitimately cover support load overhead is to charge your sorry ass for it.
Show threadVertigoApr 21, 2020
For the record, I petitioned my company on several things at once when we were first commissioning this new backend software stack:
Show threadVertigoApr 21, 2020

1) DO NOT tie our services hard to Google's APIs.
2) DO NOT rely on MQTT. There's no reason whatsoever to not use plain, simple, well-understood HTTPS.
3) DO NOT rely on cloud services. Take it from someone who worked at a cloud provider: JUST SAY NO. Self-host your infrastructure. We don't have the scale to justify cloud services yet.
4) Use the savings from (3) above to hire more local talent.

I was shot down on every ... single ... point.

Every fucking one of them.

Now we're suffering.

Show threadDevin PraterApr 21, 2020
@vertigo @jookia What about Github? I really do like Github Pages for my blog.
Show threadJookiaApr 21, 2020
@devinprater @vertigo I think this is more addressed to people and businesses that are building infrastructure or websites like Github and not end-users.
Show threadDevin Prater
@jookia @vertigo Oh, I see. Yeah, businesses should have things as in-house, running locally, as possible. Businesses relying on the cloud seems... unsteady.
Apr 21, 2020 at 10:04pmWeb