Articles like this make me think of a long lost period where everyone would listen with baited breath about the technical wisdom of Digg. Digg had a compelling product, and succeeded in spite of profound technical issues and ignorance, but invariably they became "leaders" of technology because of the position of the product (the Digg engineering team had front page after front page on here). Instagram -- and they are hardly alone -- falls in the same camp as Digg to me: This article details the most banal achievements, and would never, in a million years, be on HN if it weren't from a lauded product.
But here it is, in a long line of "Instagram did pretty basic things" articles.
As an aside, I've always carried a chip since Instagram did as so many Valley companies do and waved their hands claiming things weren't possible on Android. Since then I discovered Gallus, which is a vastly superior product than Instagram's offering, and makes none of the same excuses. A single guy did what Instagram wasted so many words claiming impossible.
I realize you were just making a specific observation about one situation, but it's worth noting that being an "older" developer (which at 15+ years experience would be late 30s) in no universe means that the developer doesn't know things.
Indeed, the irony is that many shops full of junior FEDs found databases and stored procs so intimidating that we saw the rise of things like MongoDB. Even if it completely sabotages any medium or long term plan, if all you know is JavaScript and have very naive notions about the uses of data, seems great.
But here it is, in a long line of "Instagram did pretty basic things" articles.
As an aside, I've always carried a chip since Instagram did as so many Valley companies do and waved their hands claiming things weren't possible on Android. Since then I discovered Gallus, which is a vastly superior product than Instagram's offering, and makes none of the same excuses. A single guy did what Instagram wasted so many words claiming impossible.