I'm not really clear on the asbestos risk. Everything I've read and heard seems to indicate that the panic around asbestos might be overblown. Asbestos is unsafe but it is a matter of degrees. In certain cases like loose-fill insulation or certain situations where workers grind/cut asbestos regularly, it seems to cause a meaningful level of risk. Especially for those who are already smokers.
But having gone through a remodel in a house with asbestos, I have been blown away at the extreme level of regulations, the meticulous procedures that remediation companies have to follow, the tens-of-thousands spent on remediation and repeated testing, and the tens-of-millions being thrown around in courts whenever Asbestos comes up.
As best as I can tell, the risk is close to zero for minor and occasional exposure in otherwise healthy individuals. I'm open to seeing hard evidence to convince me otherwise.
Did anyone else think this was satire for the first few minutes of reading it?
Calling databases global state and arguing why they shouldn’t be used was ridiculous enough that I wanted to call Poe’s Law here.
But it does look like the author was sincere. Event Sourcing is one of those cool things that seem great in theory but in my experience I’ve never seen it actually help teams produce good software quickly or reliably.
Productivity: If you need an X, how quickly can you implement an X at a high level of quality?
If your product manager asks for a new widget or api, can you implement it without any major bugs in 1 hour? Or will you take three days because you don't understand your programming language, your codebase and your requirements?
Will the widget/api be free of major bugs, or will it fail on a variety of edge cases that could have been solved ahead of time?
Productivity may not have crisp, clear lines. There's always context. But it comes down to: if you can do X in half the time at the same level of quality, you're twice as productive.
I admire Dan Luu's work and this article in particular really resonated with me.
But having gone through a remodel in a house with asbestos, I have been blown away at the extreme level of regulations, the meticulous procedures that remediation companies have to follow, the tens-of-thousands spent on remediation and repeated testing, and the tens-of-millions being thrown around in courts whenever Asbestos comes up.
As best as I can tell, the risk is close to zero for minor and occasional exposure in otherwise healthy individuals. I'm open to seeing hard evidence to convince me otherwise.