> My personal pet peeve is when the community keeps advertising benefits of GraphQL that are very generic and really have nothing to do with GraphQL.
Douglas Crockford taught me a really valuable lesson here... in Javascript: The Good Parts he had something directed at the haters of Javascript, that stuck with me. But I think it applies here too. GraphQL and REST are tools/patterns that have pros and cons. All tools have pros and cons. Why would you get mad at a hammer for not being good drill? Because that is what people do in our industry and it's silly.
I tried two years ago to write an article with this in mind, and the conclusion I came to in [0] is that it is an abstraction. Nothing more, nothing less. It's up to the individual to determine whether that abstraction makes sense to them.
Haters are always gonna hate, and I do appreciate your taking the time comparing and contrasting the two. Too often articles that say "Hey wait a minute here, we might be drinking the koolaid for x" come across as contrarian and spiteful. I think you managed to keep a respectful tone while asking important questions. Thank you :)
Thank you! When I was less experienced I introduced a lot of technologies to the companies I was working for. I thought I'm doing the right thing. If I were fully honest I just thought these tools are amazing and I wanted to have a play with them. Over the years I learned that I was wrong a lot of the time. I introduced kubernetes to a company that never really had the need for it. It wasn't the right move for them. I didn't fully understand the business. I think, as developers, it's important to develop balanced views and get better at decision making. It's important to not focus on tech too much but understand the business implications and derive the strategy from that.
Junior devs neither understand the business nor the technology, but they get promoted to senior dev anyway after 6 months of bootcamp and 2 years on the job.
May I ask if you didn't have enough experience how/why were you allowed to make such decisions? Is this common in some companies that anyone can make fundamental decisions regardless of number of years in service or experience with the technology?
Sure! The issue is best described as the Peter principle. They guy who hired me didn't know enough to hire the right person. He was beyond his capacity and then it was me. That's the Peter principle. At some point in our career this might happen to allot us. We get promoted into a position we're not capable of.
Douglas Crockford taught me a really valuable lesson here... in Javascript: The Good Parts he had something directed at the haters of Javascript, that stuck with me. But I think it applies here too. GraphQL and REST are tools/patterns that have pros and cons. All tools have pros and cons. Why would you get mad at a hammer for not being good drill? Because that is what people do in our industry and it's silly.
I tried two years ago to write an article with this in mind, and the conclusion I came to in [0] is that it is an abstraction. Nothing more, nothing less. It's up to the individual to determine whether that abstraction makes sense to them.
Haters are always gonna hate, and I do appreciate your taking the time comparing and contrasting the two. Too often articles that say "Hey wait a minute here, we might be drinking the koolaid for x" come across as contrarian and spiteful. I think you managed to keep a respectful tone while asking important questions. Thank you :)
0: [link redacted]