Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1632810081497513993

by mihird9 • 3 years ago

48 44 3 years ago

twitter.com

sleepybrett• 3 years ago

ego is brittle, needs a complete reckoning with reality.

Zigurd3• 3 years ago

Imagine a VP of engineering saying what's in that tweet. How many minutes until they are fired af?

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

How about a Kickstarter for funding a McKinsey review? We just want to help.

roflyear• 3 years ago

At my company they'd be promoted to CTO!

BizarroLand• 3 years ago

I imagine a jr. programmer saying that to his sr. when he can't figure something out, before the sr. points out the trivial solution to them with a pat on the head and sends them back to the code mines.

reducesuffering• 3 years ago

If we’re going by Elon’s precedent with a Senior Android Engineer, looks like about 2 hours. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23458247/elon-musk-fires...

082349872349872• 3 years ago

Musk (1971) is chronologically older than The Mythical Man Month (1975), but I bet it had already been published by the time he could have understood it.

cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

thwg• 3 years ago

Do that in Rust.

adt• 3 years ago

23 years ago...

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

DonsDiscountGas• 3 years ago

Beat me to it

Zigurd3• 3 years ago

"Second system syndrome" is what came to my mind. But I'm wicked old.

bmitc5• 3 years ago

It can be a legitimate strategy. Hard rules in software rarely work.

drks91• 3 years ago

Any successful example?

loandbehold• 3 years ago

Browser is lot more complex than Twitter.

object-a2• 3 years ago

I am extremely skeptical that Netscape 4 is a lot more complex than modern day Twitter.

rad_gruchalski• 3 years ago

Go for it. You have a lot of money to burn. Full-Scale Disaster.

netsharc• 3 years ago

In a comedy world, the results of Twitter rewrite won't be a website where people can publish 280 characters at a time, but a software that will be able to drive a car autonomously...

proc0• 3 years ago

Enterprise code is brittle. It's limited by business requirements like having multiple teams working on the same feature, or having the flexibility to change teams and have new people work on partially finished code.

In theory we could make software that lasts for decades, given some languages have been around for that long. Even if the programming languages changed, software could be abstracted and worked on a level that transcends technical specs. The problem is that it is not viable for large organizations with hundreds of engineers that are constantly rotating and changing focus. Business is too short-term oriented to care for any benefits of long-term engineering. I'm not saying it's good or bad, and maybe this changes as we move further and further into the information age.

peatmoss• 3 years ago

This wouldn't be the first rewrite of Twitter. It feels like a Monty Python sketch: "So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp."

fwlr• 3 years ago

Moonshot project: stick half a dozen devs in an office and have them rewrite Twitter’s backend in Rust, and stick another half a dozen devs in the next office and have them rewrite Twitter’s frontend in Elixir/Phoenix.

solresol• 3 years ago

This would be the most beautiful experiment.

Somehow we would need to track to two code bases for a decade afterwards and see which was the better choice.

KptMarchewa• 3 years ago

His moonshot would be python

wildpeaks• 3 years ago

Then he should go ahead and rewrite it himself.

postalrat• 3 years ago

Do it in rust and all of hn will be cheering for you.

moosedev• 3 years ago

Elon sure reminds me of an inexperienced, over-confident (or "just enough experience to be dangerous") software engineer at times.

One who has enough experience to see flaws in an existing (or "legacy") system and feel they could do better if they just rewrote it all from scratch, but not enough experience (or too much hubris) to know how well that does or does not go in practice.

He may be right, of course. I'm just pattern matching on what he sounds like...

bmitc5• 3 years ago

We shouldn't beat around the bush. Musk has shown very few times that he has any idea what he is talking about. His tweet sounds identical to some middle manager's sentiment you'd get at some huge conglomerate trying to make a name for themself after taking over a group.

And it should be noted that he's responding to another tech billionaire who fancies himself as an oracle as well. This is like throwing around verbal spars at the water cooler at the local squash club.

mrhands556• 3 years ago

At his level who has had consistently more or the same level of success doing something similar to him? I don’t understand all the Elon hate lately outside of people being bias for the sake of the narrative.

about3fitty• 3 years ago

I’m of the opposite opinion. At this stage, he has heard the counter arguments. He is smart enough to know what he is doing.

I genuinely think he is making these statements to wind us up, though I don’t guess as to why.

motoxpro• 3 years ago

I think maybe the service just takes more people than he thought.

You could make the argument that "it shouldn't take as many people as it did" i.e. the code quality "is bad"

Or you could say "this is hard and takes people to make sure it works."

You will always find that "the code is brittle" as you get rid of more and more people if your assumption is that the service should run with no oversight and no people

jiveturkey• 3 years ago

commonly called the novice expert

garbagecoder• 3 years ago

He’s probably right?? but brittle’s inevitable with something like that. If his plan is to just min FTEs, I bet it does need a rewrite. But it will still be brittle. If this brings value to shareholders, somehow, then don’t hate the player hate the game.

I think Elmo is more or less sociopathic at this point, but I think he’s more correct about Twitter than people think, just not in the way people think. I think it can be profitable still. He’ll overcome his brand damage eventually.

guax• 3 years ago

You could abstract this for any technical area to show how empty of a statement it ends up being. Thinking about Teslas:

A small wiring change had massive ramifications. The car construction is extremely brittle for no good reason.

Will ultimately need a complete redesign.

Elon: Code is brittle. Need a complete rewrite

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