I guess I'm old, and there's a lot of grey in my beard but... whatever happened to just, you know, writing code?
Simple code. Nothing clever, just logic and clear expression of what needs to be done.
It's so pleasant to just write code that does things.
Code that you can put a breakpoint on to debug.
Code that doesn't go through a library abstraction, a framework, a philosophy, three AI agents, a complex type system, metaprogramming and a cross compiler to run.
I understand that maintainable code needs organization, but I think we go off the rails when the systems of organization dominate the work, and the actual execution logic seems secondary.
I see so many teams spend endless cycles debating theories of frameworks, fp vs oop, type systems, AI rigs, etc..., and barely any time at all on solving the actual problem.
To me Effect is past those endless cycles and debates. It leaves you in control, and doesn't take over, but it gives you primitives that are really needed. Primitives without which you can get by, but you end up paying in correctness, future issues, and reinventing the wheel to solve the problem (often incorrectly). In the JS world, this is one of the reasons we end up with hundreds of dependencies for a small project: besides the actual abstractions, you have all the plumbing between abstractions.
Effect solves this elegantly.
> barely any time at all on solving the actual problem
This is how we should measure things TBH. For me, Effect solves very real problems. As a Principal engineer, I sleep so much better overseeing many teams and agents releasing to production because of Effect.
> Code that you can put a breakpoint on to debug.
This is a pain point for sure. For me, the tradeoff is clearly positive (because also the need for debugging that way decreases significantly with more declarative, type-safe, well-architected, telemetry-first code), but it is still very unfortunate.
claytongulick · · focus · HN ↗
Simple code. Nothing clever, just logic and clear expression of what needs to be done.
It's so pleasant to just write code that does things.
Code that you can put a breakpoint on to debug.
Code that doesn't go through a library abstraction, a framework, a philosophy, three AI agents, a complex type system, metaprogramming and a cross compiler to run.
I understand that maintainable code needs organization, but I think we go off the rails when the systems of organization dominate the work, and the actual execution logic seems secondary.
I see so many teams spend endless cycles debating theories of frameworks, fp vs oop, type systems, AI rigs, etc..., and barely any time at all on solving the actual problem.
kiliancs · · focus · HN ↗
Effect solves this elegantly.
> barely any time at all on solving the actual problem
This is how we should measure things TBH. For me, Effect solves very real problems. As a Principal engineer, I sleep so much better overseeing many teams and agents releasing to production because of Effect.
> Code that you can put a breakpoint on to debug.
This is a pain point for sure. For me, the tradeoff is clearly positive (because also the need for debugging that way decreases significantly with more declarative, type-safe, well-architected, telemetry-first code), but it is still very unfortunate.