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Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#101

Post by x0x0 »

kodah wrote: post #57
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

> I have come to a realization that I don't really enjoy Software Engineering(& the processes that it comes with) but I do love programming & solving problems. I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Some software companies can turn even the simplest tasks into a grueling series of processes, endless meetings, and joint work across a big number of “stakeholders”. These companies will take the jo…

Agreed, this sounds like OP is in the wrong job. To me, there are two types of companies as an engineer. There are companies that like engineers to focus solely on product. This is the kind of company you'll hear "don't reinvent the wheel" a lot at because their understanding of their core skills probably doesn't branch that deep into engineering. Then there's companies where engineering is core to the product. Some…

It could also be the wrong tools.

eg I like having tests, and I like writing them, because they make my life better. But the contrast between the effort level to write tests in ruby or python vs go... I hate go, I hate the lack of good mock support, and I dislike writing tests at work because I hate go.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#102

Post by [deleted] »

commandlinefan wrote: post #77
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Even if this is true (which it most likely is), there's no guarantee the company you move to (in your quest of finding "the right company") won't either a) also be the wrong company again right off the bat or b) become the wrong company again. I've kind of just given up. I've accepted I'm basically a "technical plumber". Take data from this system/vendor…

> in your quest of finding "the right company"...basically just a technical plumber I've come to a sort of depressing realization, 30 years into this career: the kind of companies that _will hire me_ are usually not the "right" company. I'm not even a plucky bootcamp self-motivator, I'm a state-school CS grad who's never worked for Google, Facebook or Amazon. The hiring processes that don't filter me out are the sort…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#103

Post by kraig911 »

pydry wrote: post #76
kraig911 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000x times this. It's a weird thing our profession. There's a horrible but apt (misogynistic even) saying. Happily married men are happy husbands - Unhappily married men are great philosophers. I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that…

>I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that's another topic to me) All that stuff you hate isnt unique to software. It's just capitalism.

Before I was in this industry most other things aren't ritualistic in their delivery. In retail, in healthcare, in hospitality, in television - it was very much quality/event driven. A thing was done it can't continuously improved upon. Software (at least relative to me) is like working on a dish as a chef that is never complete. A patient that never is healed etc. It's because so much about ritualistic definition of the task over and over. In mission critical scenarios I do feel waterfall is better. Agile is something where a small team can actually make something over time, lots of time but it's become a thing where meetings (and their number) are measured as part of the success of a project. Not the actual delivery.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#104

Post by varjag »

francisofascii wrote: post #51
osigurdson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 5 people on a system that has about 40 users Gosh, that is expensive software!

You are probably right, but not nearly as expensive as the 40 users (assuming employees). So if you can double their productivity it is worth it.

It could well be this software is what makes it 40 users and not 4000.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#105

Post by LegitShady »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

> I have come to a realization that I don't really enjoy Software Engineering(& the processes that it comes with) but I do love programming & solving problems. I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Some software companies can turn even the simplest tasks into a grueling series of processes, endless meetings, and joint work across a big number of “stakeholders”. These companies will take the jo…

sometimes its not the wrong company but just the wrong team or even individual coworkers (I guess if you're in a company that has multiple teams).

We had a new hire join a few years ago and every time they had a work task that they hadn't done before they'd make multiple meetings about their particular part of it, asking for advice in meetings instead of informal conversation, asking others to fill in documentation etc that might have been reasonable once or twice but essentially created a work by committee approach...to their work. It was exhausting and I let my manager know I was going to start declining their meetings semi regularly.

When people started declining the volume of such requests and tasks suddenly dropped.

But depending on how intractable your team or org, is, finding a new job may be easier.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#106

Post by Idk__Throwaway »

kraig911 wrote: post #97
massinstall wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why is it horrible? It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way. It would be curious to examine in a psychological study…

To me it's misogynistic because when I heard it first it's implied that my happiness is tied to a woman. Since I'm happily married and very much in love I know that without her I'd probably end up being a philosopher pondering problems without answers to run away from the trauma of losing her. I've been through it before :)

And how is implying your happiness is tied to a woman misogynistic?

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#107

Post by softwaredoug »

Funny! I might be the opposite

I like doing all the things that avoids the weird debugging and incident response. Maybe I'm old. I like lowering my mental load understanding a code base. Unit tests are annoying work, but I love the headaches they save. In the end, I love the feeling of being able to feel 'safe' changing and deploying code, and feel like it's going to be rock solid in production.

Programming, on the other hand, is kind of a chore. And I'm happy to see CoPilot, etc...

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#109

Post by orblivion »

The strangest thing is that I love refactoring, and I sort of assume that it's another one of those things that programmers love to do, but managers keep pushing us to limit our time and move on to things that are visible to customers. But now I'm wondering if that's not the case. Or maybe it's just the sort of programmer who loves abstractions and is cast as a "perfectionist".

I'm currently getting my footing now as a contractor. If this is actually something that most programmers don't like to do, is there an angle for me to pitch myself as "The guy who will clean up your code base"?

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#110

Post by LegitShady »

pydry wrote: post #76
kraig911 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000x times this. It's a weird thing our profession. There's a horrible but apt (misogynistic even) saying. Happily married men are happy husbands - Unhappily married men are great philosophers. I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that…

>I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that's another topic to me) All that stuff you hate isnt unique to software. It's just capitalism.

wait wait you think meetings, rituals, and meta work didn't exist in communism?
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