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Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue

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I agree. Many have been the tims when the tiniest company with the tiniest 
application has insisted on moving it over to k8s, when a regular VM with 
a classic LAMP-stack (or equivalent) would have done a better and more 
reliable job, for a vastly lower price.

But oh no, everything has to be k8s these days, even if the service only 
has 10 local users that just use a web frontend to enter data in a 
database.

On Mon, 15 Apr 2024, Ben Collver wrote:

> The Continuous Amnesia Issue
> ============================
> by Uwe Friedrichsen
> October 2, 2020
>
> As an industry we continuously forget what we have learned
>
> The continuous amnesia issue
> ============================
> In this post I want to discuss an issue that I, being for a longer
> time in IT meanwhile, observe over and over again. It is the
> observation that as an industry we continuously forget what we have
> learned.
>
> What do I mean with that claim?
>
> The very first discussion--again and again and ...
> ==================================================
> Probably I best illustrate this by sharing an experience I had. About
> two years ago I attended an unconference. It was not the first time I
> attended it. I liked it a lot. It always had a very energetic
> atmosphere. The participants were very active, loved to share and
> discuss. But unlike the previous times, I decided to do something
> different that year.
>
> As an experiment, I decided not to share myself, not to offer
> sessions myself where I drive the topic of discussion, but to listen
> only. I know that this is not the idea of an unconference, but I was
> curious. As I wrote: It was a little experiment, I wanted to conduct.
>
> I knew that always a very active group of people gathered at this
> unconference and I wanted to use that as an unbiased opportunity to
> learn about the state of IT, how people think about topics, what
> moves them, and so on. So, I looked forward to what I would learn.
>
> To be frank, it was a devastating experience for me.
>
> The session that really killed it was a session about reusability. A
> group of people came together to discuss reusability. I was really
> curious as I dealt with the topic for many years already. A great
> community. A topic I am particularly interested in. I was looking
> forward to learning something new. I did not expect a lot of new
> ideas, but maybe one or two.
>
> So, I listened ... and could not believe what I heard.
>
> The discussion moved at a level as if nobody ever had said or written
> a single word about reusability in the past 50 years. I felt set back
> to a pre-1968 discussion, set back to a time before the NATO Software
> Engineering Conferences were held. Where had all the ideas about
> reusability from the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and all the years
> after gone?
>
> Obviously, nobody in the room ever had heard anything about what we
> as an industry already had figured out about reusability. They
> discussed the topic completely from scratch, and due to that in a
> totally naive way, not touching any of the important learning of the
> last 50 years. I sat there listening and did not understand what
> happened. I felt the urge to jump up and scream: "Shut up, all of
> you! You do not know sh*t about reusability!"
>
> Of course, I did not. Besides the fact that it would have been very
> rude, it also would have been unfair.
>
> As I wrote before: It was a very active community that gathered
> there, all of them adding with their best intentions to a vibrant
> discussion. So, I eventually decided to leave. Not all sessions felt
> as devastating as this one but I had similar experiences in most of
> the sessions I attended.
>
> I was quite confused and had a lot to ponder. I went to the
> conference to learn something new and ... well, I learned something
> new. But it was definitely not what I expected to learn. I learned
> that the people in the sessions I attended did not seem to have any
> knowledge about the discussions that we had before in our industry
> about the very topics.
>
> Continuous collective amnesia
> =============================
> What happened? It kept me a while thinking. Eventually, I realized
> that I had observed a disease of our whole industry in its purest
> form: We continuously forget what we have learned. We always reinvent
> everything from scratch. My personal observation is that discussions
> in the IT community start over about every 5 years [1]. That is how
> long we remember as a community. After that we need to rediscover
> your insights from scratch.
>
> Or how I like to phrase it in a bit provocative way:
>
>> In IT, we suffer from continuous collective amnesia and we are even
>> proud of it! [2]
>
> Again, this is not about the people who discussed in that room. All
> of them did their best, they eagerly discussed hoping to gather new
> insights. They were simply victims of a widespread disease in IT:
>
>> We do not value the wisdom of the past.
>
> We suffer from extreme youth obsession, not only regarding the age of
> people but also regarding how we value knowledge. Old knowledge is
> considered "worthless", while new knowledge is considered "great".
>
> A tweet that Mark, founder of Bitmen Studios sent me in a little
> conversion we had via Twitter IMO really nicely describes the
> effect:
>
>> My point here is rather not searching for a unique "best" solution
>> but everywhere software devs across the globe are solving the
>> "same" problem again and again (and fall into the same pitfalls).
>> The increase in tech needed and the associated complexity amplifies
>> that problem.
>
> We reinvent the wheel over and over again, making the same mistakes
> again and again, not learning as a community. And as Mark correctly
> pointed out, the growing technology complexity amplifies the
> problem--and, as I would like to add, vice versa: Our continuous
> collective amnesia amplifies our growing complexity problem.
>
> Why is it this way? Why do we loose our collective memory every
> 5 years?
>
> I am not sure about the causes. My current attempt of an explanation
> consists of 5 factors:
>
> 1. We consider ourselves a dynamic, fast moving industry. New
>   concepts, tools and technologies emerge every day. How can
>   knowledge of yesterday still be applicable to problems of today?
>   That is what we keep telling ourselves. We wallow in our perceived
>   vigor and speed of innovation, neglecting that we keep solving the
>   same problems over and over again, just with different tools and
>   technologies. Yes, some things change, but usually 80%+ of the
>   problems stay the same. But we refuse to see that. We prefer
>   considering ourselves the "masters of new".
>
> 2. We are technology believers. We are convinced that we can solve
>   any problem by simply applying the right tool or technology. E.g.,
>   if people have a collaboration problem, the typical reflex is to
>   look for a tool that solves the problem, neglecting that it almost
>   certainly is not a tool problem. The same is true for all other
>   kinds of problems. Whenever we face a non-trivial problem, we try
>   to solve it by applying a tool or technology to it instead of
>   solving the actual problem. This has become such a natural pattern
>   that we do not realize it anymore. And as past tools and
>   technologies did not solve the problem, we look for new ones.
>
> 3. Insights grow slower than knowledge. Our knowledge continuously
>   grows, the longer we work in IT. Of course, not everything we
>   learn is valuable. Quite often we learn that some of our knowledge
>   is plain crap. If I, e.g., think back to SOA: Wow, what a crap!
>   Would never do it again this way! But not everything was bad. I
>   also took some great insights from the SOA times. It takes times
>   to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the beginning of our
>   careers we basically learn new stuff all the time. It takes some
>   years until we start to see the recurring patterns, to separate
>   real insights from plain knowledge.
>
> 4. We face a continuous stream of new developers. I feel as if I face
>   a new generation of developers every 5 years [3]. Maybe that is a
>   very subjective experience. But for me, people just coming from
>   their IT education, being 5 years in business, 10 years or 15
>   years and more feel very different, like different generations.
>   All those new people in IT have to build their own insights from
>   scratch. They have nothing to build on as in IT we created a
>   cult(ure) of new, celebrating the new and despising the old.
>
> 5. If you combine the "cult of new" with what I call "the arrogance
>   of the youth", you get an explosive mixture. Before you think that
>   I want to talk bad about younger people: I just talk from personal
>   experience. I was a graduate myself years ago and believe me: I
>   was arrogant! I knew better! I had to learn humbleness the hard
>   way, and I am still not sure if I arrived (it is a lot easier to
>   judge an old self than to judge the current self). So, I do not
>   want to reproach any young person for being somewhat arrogant. I
>   guess that is natural and also healthy to a certain degree because
>   it helps against persisting in outdated ideas as an industry. But
>   in a culture of new, this habit works as an unhealthy accelerant.
>
> If we put these factors together, we end up with an environment where
> we only value new things and despise old things. If we face a
> problem, we never look if someone solved the same problem before [4].
> We only look for a shiny new solution, ideally a new tool or
> technology. If we learn a good solution for a problem, we forget it
> after a few years and start again from scratch.
>
> It is not that individuals do not learn and do not grow insights.
> They do.
>
> But as a community, we do not.
>
> Unlike other engineering disciplines, we do not create our body of
> knowledge, foster our timeless insights, work to extract the essence
> from the solutions we found yesterday and make it available to the
> community of today. We do not only not create a body of knowledge, we
> despise it. We always look to the horizon hoping to spot a silver
> bullet (which does not exist as we know) instead of looking back once
> in a while and trying to learn from the wisdom of our ancestors.
>
> Moving on
> =========
> This is what I observe all the time. Again, this does not mean that I
> do not meet individuals who act differently. But in general, I see
> the same discussions recurring again and again about every 5 years.
>
> To be honest, I do not have an actual idea how to change this. This
> cult of new is so deeply embedded in our culture and self-perception
> that it would take a long time and effort to change it.
>
> Personally, I try to share some of the old wisdom, e.g., with my talk
> "Excavating the knowledge of the ancestors". There is also the
> "Papers We Love" movement that tries to share such knowledge.
>
> But overall this is just a drop in the ocean. It would require a
> radical rethinking to stop our continuous collective amnesia. We
> would need to accept that most of our problems are not new, but that
> most of the times we solve the same problems again and again, just
> with different technology.
>
> But until we learn this, I am afraid we are not yet an engineering
> discipline, but rather a bunch of people obsessed with "new", not
> learning.
>
> As so often, there would be a lot more to write. But I leave it here.
> I hope I gave you something to ponder.
>
> And maybe you will come up with a great idea how to change it. If you
> have one, please share it! We need it--more desperately than most
> people are aware of ...
>
> [1]
> Maybe it is 7 years, maybe just 4 years, depending on the topic. But
> if you are long enough in this industry, you start to get these
> deja-vu feelings more and more often.
>
> [2]
> I explain the "we are even proud of it" part a bit further down the
> post. Basically it means that we celebrate ourselves for being so
> "innovative" and "fast moving", using it as a welcome excuse to
> ignore everything we could learn from the past.
>
> [3]
> I have seen charts that claim the number of software engineers
> doubles every 5 years. As I do not know the source of these charts, I
> cannot tell if they are right or wrong. Yet, any level of growth
> would leave us with more inexperienced engineers than experienced
> engineers at any point in time which would amplify the "lack of
> actual insights" effect.
>
> [4]
> I do not talk about coding tips shared on platforms like Stack
> Overflow. I talk about more fundamental problems like, e.g., the
> aforementioned reusability, its benefits and risks, when to use it,
> when to avoid it, what you need to consider, etc. I talk about the
> insights that outlast technology waves.
>
> From: <https://www.ufried.com/blog/continuous_amnesia_issue/>
>

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The Continuous Amnesia Issue Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> - 2024-04-15 22:34 +0000
  Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue D <nospam@example.net> - 2024-04-16 10:51 +0200
    Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2024-04-16 21:34 +0100
      Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-18 01:43 +0000
        Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue D <nospam@example.net> - 2024-04-18 11:03 +0200
  Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Javier <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2024-04-16 22:25 +0000
    Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-18 01:42 +0000
      Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue D <nospam@example.net> - 2024-04-18 11:03 +0200
        Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-18 22:17 +0000
          Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue D <nospam@example.net> - 2024-04-19 10:42 +0200
            Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-19 09:28 +0000
              Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue D <nospam@example.net> - 2024-04-19 22:22 +0200
            Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2024-04-20 21:15 +0000
              Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue D <nospam@example.net> - 2024-04-21 12:24 +0200
          Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2024-04-19 17:21 +0000
            Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-19 22:02 +0000
            Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Dave Yeo <dave.r.yeo@gmail.com> - 2024-04-19 22:05 -0700
              Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-20 22:42 +0000
                Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Dave Yeo <dave.r.yeo@gmail.com> - 2024-04-20 16:50 -0700
                Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-21 02:13 +0000
  Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-17 03:21 +0000
    Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2024-04-17 09:04 +0100
      Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> - 2024-04-17 15:19 +0000
        Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2024-04-17 17:40 +0100
        Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> - 2024-05-11 21:42 -0300
          Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-05-12 07:39 +0000
      Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2024-04-17 22:04 +0000
    Re: Code Reuse (was Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue) kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2024-04-21 15:29 +0000
  Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Eric Pozharski <apple.universe@posteo.net> - 2024-04-20 16:19 +0000
  Re: The Continuous Amnesia Issue Eric Pozharski <apple.universe@posteo.net> - 2024-04-23 06:24 +0000

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