So I applaud the author trying to bring some nuance into the discussion! The precision around what they mean by boring is appreciated. It makes me curious to better understand NetBSD. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to penetrate the discourse 😅
the phrase work doing what you love and you never work a day again in your life is an empty platitude of nonsense
No, no, no. The author has simply misunderstood the slogan. It’s clearly about stubbornly choosing unemployment in service of one’s vocation.
But, more seriously, there’s a valuable point being made here:
Boring should be read as well-understood.
It’s not the vacuous truism it might first appear. The key is that well-understood doesn’t just mean “by me”, it’s a property of an entire living community. Across generations, even! Boring tech is strong culture.
I don’t understand the need to use ‘boring’, when there are other words for anti-surprising, that have a positive sound to them, like reliable, dependable and trustworthy.
The article presents getting woken up in the night as a bad thing, that might be prevented by using ‘boring’ technology. But wouldn’t it also just have been prevented by reliable tech?
Let’s say you’ve just learnt about something. You try it out and it works much better. Now, would you describe it as a boring piece of tech? No! You can be excited about reliable tech, there is no need to label it boring for it to be good. Something can be good even though you are still excited about it.
Do techies just suck at marketing? Or is it possible that we use this term to specifically acknowledge the downsides of our culturally ingrained fascinations with shiny novel things?
Generally: I’m so tired of “boring” discourse. “Boring” usually just means “boring to me” or “use a thing that’s popular.” Like when developers say “simple” or “complex,” they mostly mean “thing I like” vs. “thing I don’t like.” People say “boring” to avoid having technical conversations about merits. People look to “boring” but don’t acknowledge the strategic downsides.. People will say “boring” to replace a well-tested system on atypical tech with few moving parts with a rewrite in a conventional stack with a bajillion moving parts, losing functionality. Here’s another example.
So I applaud the author trying to bring some nuance into the discussion! The precision around what they mean by boring is appreciated. It makes me curious to better understand NetBSD. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to penetrate the discourse 😅
“Boring” and “simple”. Everybody thinks the stuff they’re used to and know well are “boring” and “simple”.
No, no, no. The author has simply misunderstood the slogan. It’s clearly about stubbornly choosing unemployment in service of one’s vocation.
But, more seriously, there’s a valuable point being made here:
It’s not the vacuous truism it might first appear. The key is that well-understood doesn’t just mean “by me”, it’s a property of an entire living community. Across generations, even! Boring tech is strong culture.
I don’t understand the need to use ‘boring’, when there are other words for anti-surprising, that have a positive sound to them, like reliable, dependable and trustworthy.
The article presents getting woken up in the night as a bad thing, that might be prevented by using ‘boring’ technology. But wouldn’t it also just have been prevented by reliable tech?
Let’s say you’ve just learnt about something. You try it out and it works much better. Now, would you describe it as a boring piece of tech? No! You can be excited about reliable tech, there is no need to label it boring for it to be good. Something can be good even though you are still excited about it.
Do techies just suck at marketing? Or is it possible that we use this term to specifically acknowledge the downsides of our culturally ingrained fascinations with shiny novel things?