
Ask HN: What all is broken/frustrating in software engineering - ankurdhama
What do you think?
======
crooked-v
In the land of web dev, the number of files you need for a "modern" project
that are boilerplate configs or boilerplate placeholders is pretty absurd.

.browserslistrc, .babelrc, .editorconfig, .eslintrc, .prettierrc,
.stylelintrc, jsconfig.json, package.json, src/index.html... and this is with
a "zero config" Parcel setup. And that's not counting the src/vendor/ folder
of two dozen files that only exist to work around old AngularJS libs expecting
everything to happen in a global context and there still being no bundled that
can handle those properly.

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tannhaeuser
Reinventing wheels and justifying it by straw man arguments when in reality
it's just generational churn. Building up needless towers of abstractions.
Going all-in on cloud and fashion stacks without assessment of requirements
for a given task aka resume-driven development.

For example, agile vs waterfall (when there is no such thing as a "waterfall";
there _is_ such a thing as cluelessness, though).

It's most readily observed in Web dev, where every five years or so the entire
landscape is changing because a new generation can't be bothered to understand
what came before (or, in fact, where the de facto mainstream stack has grown
too many idiosyncrasies). For example, I'm expecting a back-to-basic-Ajax
movement at the end of the React hype cycle, similar in spirit to
motherfuckingwebsite.com.

~~~
hactually
[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

------
mabynogy
Because "worse is better". Social human issues (like the job market or
committees) give a boost to not so great or "good enough" softwares. People
can emancipate themselves from that but they need to admit it first and find
satisfying explanations.

Curtis Yarvin (urbit), Terry Davis (TempleOS), Alan Kay and Niklaus Wirth are
people who don't follow the others.

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m3tr0s
React, Redux, and all the (not so) necessary libs it needs to work (not so)
properly.

------
togusa2017
Interview questions aiming to pass only rocks star programmers or leetcode
grinders.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Serious question: what’s a leetcode grinder?

~~~
Dreami
There's a site where you can learn solve "interview-style" questions,
[https://leetcode.com](https://leetcode.com) Just heard of it recently on HN

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CM30
Project planning? I don't think I've ever seen a software engineering project
where the costs don't overrun and the tasks don't take longer than they're
'meant' to. Waterfall, agile, anything else... they all seem to fall apart in
everyday life with development related tasks.

Similarly, feature/scope creep seems to be a big problem in this field too.
It's not as common as projects taking too long/costing more than expected, but
still pretty common none the less. Usually because someone didn't actually ask
the customer what they needed before building it, or feel like telling someone
that they can't just 'have extras thrown in for free midway through
development'.

Documentation too. We desperately need more people to willing to write/update
that stuff, especially where free software is concerned.

------
Felz
I'm frustrated that so much work is duplicated. Every new programming language
seems like it requires another new universe of packages around it. Often
there's not even an attempt at interoperation, except maybe for C.

But even just between projects I feel like I lose a lot, rewriting things that
I've done before, but slightly different. It's maddening.

~~~
lsh
every single web page feels like this to me

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jackgolding
Knowing what tools to use and how to put them together. How many times have
you seen posts about what blogging frameworks to use? So many of these stacks
have out-dated documentation on the hosting service too (i.e. one click
install Pelican blog on Digital Ocean)

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tmaly
I think the process or best practices of writing requirements and specs is not
well understood by the business side in many industries. This is my opinion
would greatly benefit the engineering side.

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rajeshpant
People with no real cs background/coding knowledge or experience becoming
managers and making top dollars and engineers struggling with pay.

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ankyth27
Windows operating system. I mean so many people are using that since a long
time. Still its performance is too glitchy and slow.

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billconan
documentation

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lsh
humourless Vulcans.

------
tonyedgecombe
JavaScript.

