thoman23

I've always been happy with JIRA, using it successfully in large enterprises and in my own 2-person startup. But I know you have plenty of company in your hatred for it. As a tool for quickly entering an issue I want to track and having simple drag and drop across swimlanes for my development workflow, it does all I need it to do.

Can I ask what your preferred alternative is?

I appreciate you sharing this. I'm considering embarking on this approach with my team, and everything you are mentioning is what I was worried about when I first started reading up on the microservices architecture.

Now I'm seriously considering a somewhat hybrid approach: Collect all of my domain data in one giant normalized operational data store (using a fairly traditional ETL approach for this piece), and then having separate schemas for my services. The service schemas would have denormalized objects that are designed for the functional needs of the service, and would be implemented either as materialized views built off the upstream data store, or possibly with an additional "data pump" approach where activity in the upstream data store would trigger some sort of asynchronous process to copy the data into the service schemas. That way my services would be logically decoupled in the sense that if I wanted I could separate the entire schema for a given service into its own separate database later if needed. But by keeping it all in one database for now, it should make reconciliation and data quality checks easier. Note that I don't have a huge amount of data to worry about (~1-2TB) which could make this feasible.

Yes, that's exactly what it implies. Like I said at the top of this thread, I'm not an expert on this approach (I've done my reading, but haven't yet spent time in the trenches), but my understanding is that you would embrace the duplication and eventual consistency. I do wonder how well it works in practice though, and how much time you would spend running cross-service reconciliation checks to make sure your independent data stores are still in sync.

> "all the services needed to talk to each other"

I'm not an expert by any means, but I'm pretty sure that statement indicates a problem.

From the article linked on the github site:

> "While the path to becoming a software engineer used to involve going to college and majoring in computer science, now candidates for engineering jobs also include autodidacts who taught themselves how to code and graduates of coding bootcamps, which teach web development fundamentals in a shortened period of time. This means non-traditional candidates can get a foothold in the industry without following a traditional path — but it doesn’t matter if they can’t get hired because of a fixation on memorizing trivia."

So now a computer science education is "trivia" and a one-month web development bootcamp is equivalent?

No, one should be proud of creating an elegant solution.

It is orders of magnitude harder to write a “simple” solution. Developers should not be proud of complexity at any age.

My understanding is that the point of microservices isn't to just move what would have been a relational join in SQL to an equivalent join in the service layer, which is what the author is implying. Instead, the order service should already have the subset of user data it needs to perform its function. If a user name changes, for example, that would trigger an event that gets consumed by a handler in the order domain. You embrace some denormalization and duplication of data in order for each service to have as much of what it needs to perform its function without a ton of other dependencies.

I'm not saying this is necessarily the way to go, I'm just saying that this is my reading of the microservices design pattern.

Thinking more about TaxJar...I wonder if they are at any risk of employees of an existing firm doing work for TaxJar on the current company's time and equipment, which would in many cases make the TaxJar code the intellectual property of the former company.

TaxJar sounds insane. So after I go through up to 4 weeks of poorly paid work (while working my existing full-time job and raising a family), I get to participate in their hazing rituals!

https://life.taxjar.com/taxjar-traditions/

> "A couple of weeks of work with a task being assigned"

lol, OK

Isn’t Crossover a scam of some sort?

Seconded! You could be my work best friend and years after we've moved on we could still enjoy not talking to each other.

If money was already taken care of, I would absolutely be building software (and playing music). I just wouldn't be doing it at my current job (the software part...my music would be frowned upon at work).

Agreed. Time in the market beats time out of the market.

That is a way of winking to buyers and saying,”pssst...it works but we just can’t legally say it works yet.”

No kidding. #2 in class and 1500/1600 puts you in the running for Harvard/Stanford, does it not? At the very least that does not sound like a "very average student".

They might just be over the 50 million gross revenue threshold though.

Is it ethically wrong when big companies influence the tax code itself? Because that's what happens now. Loopholes are created, not just "found".

ITT: A whole lot of people who don't like to talk about what is usually people's favorite subject...themselves.

Now I am off to find a random person to describe my ideal tech stack to before fixing their computer.

Hmm, migrate to Java from Scala in search of shorter, concise code? Something tells me the Scala developer in that case basically wrote Java code to begin with.

Dear lord

Depends on what you're optimizing for I guess.

Both the lottery and working at a startup are rational bets if you believe the value of money is non linear.

Of course Google supports exact string matching. Just put your term in double quotes.

It's funny how everyone seems to hate "big frameworks" while at the same time complaining about how "everyone uses them". It's sort of like the Yogi Berra line: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

I for one will go against the flow (or am I with the flow?) and say that what I see coming out of Angular 2 looks FANTASTIC. Many of the things I love as a Scala developer are finally becoming mainstream on the client side. Add in the promise of NativeScript (mobile apps) and Electron (desktop apps) and this is an incredible time to be a web developer.

Everyone seems to get hung up on "mastery" or being a professional. Well guess what? You know what made me more receptive to music theory lessons? Thousands of hours of guitar practice. Practice feeds on itself. Once I was proficient with the physical basics of the guitar, I naturally reached out to all of the YouTube lessons on theory. The theory that now seems very straightforward would have been lost on me as a beginner.

> About the only thing that comes out right is that to develop a skill, you need to practice. Which, to quote my own least favorite phrase, we already knew.

Everybody knows they need to practice. But at least for me, the 10,000 rule set my expectations properly. Knowing that "practice" means 20 hours a week for 10 years helped me get past the temptation to quit when things aren't so easy in the beginning.

Exactly! I grew up thinking school is "my thing" and when I saw people with other skills (music, drawing, acting, cooking, etc.), that must just be "their thing". Yes, people have natural strengths and aptitudes, and there are some things that I know I'm just not inclined for, but it is a very empowering feeling to believe that I can choose to dedicate my time to learning a new skill and become proficient at it. At the same time, the "rule" also should tell you that each new skill you pursue has a serious opportunity cost, so choose carefully!

I don't care if it's oversimplified. The 10,000 hour rule is brilliant for getting people past the difficult stages of learning a new skill. Can't play guitar? It's not because you were born without musical talent...it's because you haven't put in your time yet. Get to work. People aren't born playing guitar. They learn to play guitar...through practice...lots and lots and lots of practice...10,000 hours of practice!

For me, this realization was life-changing. And yes, I learned to play the guitar at the age of 40 after reading Outliers because I then had faith that with enough hours of hard work that I could do it. And I did. And now playing music is one of my greatest pleasures in life.