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Comment by danielovichdk | Hacker News Reader

I have very tired of these analogies and pop cultural programming anecdotes.

This is another one.

There is no place in any professional field where you get away with poor choices.

Why call it a rocket stage ? Why not just call it exactly what it is - very bad judgement, very poor understanding and simply immature pop cultural choices.

No one in the right professional mind are making such choices. It might happen other places. But not in a professional setting.

But if it does get rid of those people. They are not good enough.

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>Why call it a rocket stage ? Why not just call it exactly what it is - very bad judgement, very poor understanding and simply immature pop cultural choices.

You've misunderstood the author's point. It's not about "bad judgement". The extra "rocket stage" is just another metaphor about inevitable "tradeoffs" of simplicity vs complexity.

It's a rewriting of the common adage: Every new solution to an old problem also creates a new set of problems. That's just the tautology part. The question is if you'd rather have the "new problems" instead of the "old problems". That's the cost-benefit analysis part.

E.g. Old car engines carburetors wastes too much gas. New Solution uses more complicated fuel injectors with oxygen sensors and onboard computers to dynamically control the fuel mixture. But now your new solution also created new problems of "oxygen sensors go bad that you have to replace" and "add another supply-chain dependency on computer chips" to assemble completed cars. Ok, got it... we'd still rather have the new problems of replacing oxygen sensors and adding the extra complexity of the ECU computers to gain fuel efficiency.

That's what the author is saying with his last sentence about fully understanding if the extra complexity is worth the cost: >"Maybe it's what you need to get where you want to go, but be clear about the extra weight, operational cost, engineering overheard, mental overhead."

We should definitely stop using metaphors involving things we don't understand (rocket design) to explain things we might already understand (software development).

We understand almost nothing, so this is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I don't think the cost/benefit of a second stage are hard to understand

I'd be very worried if people who write software for a living actually believe they understand rockets more than software...

... and if not, why the analogy? Aren't analogies used when you want to explain something that people are relatively unfamiliar with, using something they are more familiar with?

I typically use analogies to make something that is abstract more concrete.

Some poor choices aren’t obvious at first without the right intuition or experience. I think these articles are attempting to describe that in other words.

It's more lack of "second thoughts" skills and possibly lack of State of Art and Decision Records; it is impossible to learn from failure if no trace exist or no one knows who did the decision.

I agree, the analogy is shaky.

Adding extra components to you solution, like Kafka, adds complexity, overhead, maintenance etc. While adding an extra rocket stages reduces load, because you get rid of the extra rocket element as soon as it has been used. It will make the rocket lightweight once it is in final orbit.

The intention is good, but the analogy isn't right, it's actually the opposite :)

I never like analogies in decision making, especially when done by management who don't understand technical details of a solution. "Sure we need Kafka, we can't send a tank ship into space can we?"

> the analogy is shaky.

The current state of software development is more like "Every new software is born with its own personal windmill tied to its neck for improved aerodynamics and efficiency. When it takes off you will really see it fly."

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