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How is Software Development difficult ?

Princewhyte Dabotubo on July 06, 2022

I've learned HTML and CSS, I've built a landing page, I've gone on to learn Javascript, and now I'm building amazing things. Oh there's a new fram...
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Nathan Stevenson

I've heard a lot of testimonies from cloud users lol, especially the one with auto-scaling approved.

I don't know much about cloud services. Just some limited experience with GCloud and AWS.

Auto-scaling screams bankruptcy, to me. Know what you are doing and have deep pockets. Racked up 15$ in a couple days on a basic, bottom tier server I didnt event use for those 2 or 3 days. I had...I think it was called high-availability, enabled.

Can only imagine the cost of a service for +10,000 monthly users. Better have that seed money coming in 😂

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Princewhyte Dabotubo

😆 🤣 that seed money

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Phil Ashby

Well put, and a great practical approach to creating software things that are useful to others 👏.

Having come right through a career from ASM/C on MS-DOS in the 80s to system architect of a global corporate hybrid on-premise/multi-cloud infrastructure, I can assure you that your pragmatic approach is the right one 😄

I would caution against an emphasis on efficiency too soon in any development. First make it effective, then if the popularity grows, work on more efficient use of resources, when the funds are available to do so!

Final note on complexity and software engineering being 'hard' - in my experience this comes from two places:

  • The real world challenge is also hard (eg: medical diagnosis, global scale - Netflix)
  • People. Change. Their. Minds. Business plans change, mergers happen, CEO's come & go..

Keep at it my friend :)

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Princewhyte Dabotubo

I wish I could sit next to you as a tell me more. Thanks

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Tracy Gilmore

Much in the same vein as comments from Adam and Sadeedpv, you are only just at the start of your career. From Software Developer it is time to up your game and become a full Software Engineer. Yes you can write code and produce working software but that is far from the complete Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). There is a lot more to learn including the fact, in software development, you never stop learning. There is always new skill to acquire and even some old techniques/technologies (like Functional Programming) to learn or learn from.
I wish you the very best in your journey and every success in your career.

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Princewhyte Dabotubo

Thanks a lot for this

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Adam Crockett 🌀

If you want to become a better developer, give up development and become a consultant for a while. I see what other companies developers do.. you would be surprised how your standards here are not being upheld by many let's put it that way. I will become a developer again one day, in the mean time I just do it on my own projects

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JoelBonetR 🥇 • Edited

I feel this topic very interesting and you got some good comments in here so I just want to release you from some burden, regarding this sentence:

To be honest, after writing code there's one question in my head. Is this the best approach?

It does not need to be the best approach most of the time, but any decision you take needs to be justified.

In the community we have hype and trends but those are not always mirrored to the business world. i.e. You can make a post talking about what you like most, praising a framework, lib, service or whatever. Claiming to use ALWAYS this tech, but your likenesses are not a valid reason in the business world and when they show up usually someone will loose money.

The exercise that needs to be done is as follows:
Do you plan to use thatSpecificTech? Ok, explain me, technically the reasons taking the nuances of it into account and the context we're in.

If you can't justify your choice over alternatives then your choice is probably wrong. This of course, needs a big picture understanding on the "state of the art" on a given platform/environment.

I write an overview about choosing the right technologies on a web development project that covers the flip side if you want to check it out to pick extra info 😄

Best regards

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Sadeedpv🥇

"That your code runs don't mean it's good enough"

That's a valuable lesson right there 👏. Software development involves solving problems efficiently until you reach an optimal solution.

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Princewhyte Dabotubo

You are a wise fellow

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Nathan Stevenson

Hello, other Nathan. That sounds about right.

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SiddharthSinghTanwar

A great article. I experience a lot of the similar emotions just with different technologies. These discussions help. Thanks.