Cargo cult programming is killing the software industry
Some months ago, I asked a self-identified “machine learning expert” to explain backpropagation to me. They could not. However, they knew how to NPM install Tensorflow and train a model.
I asked a “Kubernetes expert” to explain how containers achieve resource isolation, how it’s different from machine virtualization and why it was more efficient. They could not. However, they could write a Dockerfile, run docker and use kubectl.
I asked a “Node.js expert” how Node.js can handle multiple concurrent disk operations within a single threaded event loop, even when the underlying operating system did not provide non-blocking disk I/O primitives. They could not even understand the question. But they knew all the latest Node.js frameworks.
I asked a “React.js expert” to compare different SPA approaches such as direct DOM manipulation, MVC driven client side templating, component-based DOM manipulation and compile-to-vanilla-JS. They didn’t understand what I was asking. But they knew the names of all the popular React.js libraries and frameworks.
I asked a “database expert” proposing that we go for the “latest” database, whether they had done all the optimizing that was possible with the current “boring” database: tuning parameters, read-only replicas, materialized views, different…
