Even in a shop with just Linux and mac, I think docker (especially deployed via fargate) causes way more problems than it solve. We have a single instance of a single app that used to run just fine in a Ubuntu vm. Now it runs in fargate. We waste huge time futzing with the image size due to fargate insane 8gb limit. We wast huge time working around not being able to get a shell when something goes wrong.
Local development also sucks. The docker engine is essentially unusable on my colleagues Mac, consuming 100%+ of all available cpu while sitting idle. On my Linux box, either docker breaks my networking, or IT firewall rules break dockers networking. It’s even worse with wfh, because our vpn is incomparable with docker. Local dev just happens in an anaconda env instead. So what’s the point?
VMs have none of these problems.
Docker is the leakiest abstraction I’ve yet to come across.
I'm not incredibly knowledgeable about AWS and Docker, but I have a couple questions for you:
- How would EC2s compare to Fargate ? I encountered situations where, running the numbers, I much preferred having my own set-up with images ready to deploy + adapting my EC2 instances to the task, instead of dealing with Fargate's convoluted restrictions and definitions
- Has your colleague tried to increase the disk size given to Docker? I have seen on a few macbooks that this made a world of difference for CPU usage, and I thought I'd pass on the information if it hasn't already be tried yet
Your whole argument is based around “if you have good model...”. This where most all control theory falls on its face. Getting a good is hard. For lqr that model better be mostly linear.
Oh, you system model isn’t first order? Now you need an estimator/Kalman filter. Or more sensors. That’s just more complexity for questionable benifit, which is why lqr is beloved by academics [0]. For anything that would be adaquetly controlled with pid, stick with that. After about 2 hours fiddling with the knobs, it’ll be close enough.
This whole idea of optimality is based on bad intuition. Which states do you care about? Why? Is that more valuable than control effort? Why? Who is doing the economic analysis to determine what ultimately costs us more money? In the end, this thing are tuned just like pid: you stop when the step response looks nice. Besides all that, for a lot of systems, and in particular flexible structures with a lot of states, “penalizing state excursions” isn’t really useful intuition to begin with for almost all state space represtations. You are better off with a pid and notch filter.
[0] I decided to complete my PhD in controls so could make statements like that with at least marginal credibility.
I did my PhD in controls too, and I’d pretty much agree with all of that. There is a ton of really heavy math flying around with little to show for it. If your system is anything beyond weakly nonlinear, you are basically screwd. The best and effectively only tool we have otherwise was invented over a 100 years ago by lyapunov. And using it requires, I’m not joking, nearly divine inspiration.
Lyapunov functions indicate Lyapunov stability. A system that is Lyapunov Stable will settle into a global minimum state and stay there stably indefinitely. Kind of like a ball in a bowl, where all gradients point in to the middle. Non linear systems can "refuse to settle". I may be misremembering something from my controls courses
At a high level, I agree. My take is that for things like broken bones, and other accute trauma, doctors are great. For everything else, especially anything chronic, and they are completely worthless.
You can get the same advice from a crossfit website. Doctors aren’t the ones fortifying food and nurses seem perfectly capable of administering a vaccine.
It could just as well be argued that the researchers who choose to publish there ought to be publicly shamed. Elsevier is nothing without an army willing accomplices.
That's got to be one of the best examples of victim blaming if there ever was one. Do you realize that these 'willing accomplices' have extremely little choice in the matter? Academia is a battlefield where grand money is the reason for competition and publishing in these magazines is pretty much the only way to further ones' career unless the universities take a stand, which is exactly what TFA is all about.
I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve been an academic. You can call it victim blaming all you like, but you’re just removing personal responsibility from the picture. Nobody forced these people into their profession, nobody is forcing them to publish with any given journal, and nobody is forcing them to remain academics.
We always have choice.
Passing the buck and saying “I believe what I’m doing is wrong, but until there’s a policy that prevents everybody else from doing it too, I won’t change” is just lazy.
I prefer using the keyboard nub on my ThinkPad myself, and have the touchpad disabled. If I'm typing, it's easier to use a nub. If I'm not typing, then I'd probably prefer a touchscreen for more accuracy.
As long whatever I'm doing doesn't require precise movements, then a touchscreen is good enough, and easier to use. If it's something harder to touch with big fingers (say position in code), then I'd probably rather use arrow keys anyways.
I’ve used one on other people’s macbooks.
I think my objection is mostly aesthetic. It just seems so gaudy and excessive or something along those lines.
Another possibility I didn’t see below: a higher than average number of HN readers appear to have gone to grad school. My (admittedly jaded) view says that grad school produces one of two outcomes: people disgusted by academia, and people with Stockholm syndrome.
I don’t think science would suffer too much if we just abandoned peer review and committed to the arXiv route. Peer review does little to ensure research is actually rigorous. Rather, it mostly ensures the authors know how to play game: use the right language, cite the right people, and don’t stray too far from the current fad while simultaneously selling what they’ve done like it’s the hottest thing since relativity.
Once you’ve read enough papers, you don’t even have to invoke the replication crisis to see that most papers should be taken with a grain of salt.
Local development also sucks. The docker engine is essentially unusable on my colleagues Mac, consuming 100%+ of all available cpu while sitting idle. On my Linux box, either docker breaks my networking, or IT firewall rules break dockers networking. It’s even worse with wfh, because our vpn is incomparable with docker. Local dev just happens in an anaconda env instead. So what’s the point?
VMs have none of these problems. Docker is the leakiest abstraction I’ve yet to come across.