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Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

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Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#241

Post by strikelaserclaw »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #44

I'd argue the current culture is set up to create this very scenario. You've realized that your work is stripped of many elements of creativity in the name of making you replaceable. Of course, we can't say that last part, so we instead talk up how great tooling is, and how quickly we can onboard people (Nobody asks why there is such a need to onboard people so often, or so quickly.) When your pursuit of mastery is t…

web dev is the worst, things change so frequently but they almost always change laterally so you feel like you are learning a lot but it seems like you most can do the same things after all these learnings.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#242

Post by gamblor956 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #165
digitalsushi wrote: post #58

The red tape is garroting us. My wife's dev environment VMs are 'remediated' at 8pm regardless if she's using them or not - there is no override policy - and the company is singing the success story of saving 40 dollars in licensing. At another corporation, it can take several weeks to learn how to fill out the IAM role and permission boundaries to allow a new app to run - and a governance board has to review it and…

> " All of this, to dabble in code " I'm not a professional programmer, and when my laptop takes 10 minutes to start moving the mouse cursor smoothly after waking from a weekend suspend (today!), I'm pointing fingers at you all, the professional "dabblers" who don't understand computers, don't understand firewalls, don't understand databases, don't understand algorithms, don't understand garbage collectors, don't und…

This.

For most of the past decade, the true cost of "developer productivity" was borne by the users of their software in wasted time, wasted electricity, and money thrown after buggy or nonfunctional features.

At this point in the aviation industry's lifecycle, we had gone from learning that flying was possible to landing on the moon. If software had followed the same trajectory, we'd have AI servants right now. But programmers insist on re-creating the wheel every few years, so instead we just get new frameworks and languages that do what the existing frameworks and languages do, and a whole lot of new bugs as programmers race to adopt the hot new thing.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#244

Post by janetacarr »

ambivalents wrote: post #229
janetacarr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd quit but equity... From what I've seen, those golden handcuffs are usually gold-plated handcuffs with the same steel underneath.

Meaning, the eventual payout is rarely what you think it is?

In a sense, yes. To be honest I didn't really want to spell it out because I like leaving something to the imagination for my readers.

Sometimes they're solid gold (ie, preferred equity) and one has to ask themselves whether or not it's worth their time, attention, security, and happiness. Often the handcuffs are gold-plated (ie, employee options), and give the illusion they're worth suffering for in a similar manner as the solid gold ones.

At the end of the day, they're both handcuffs and serve the same function as the steel ones.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#245

Post by lampshades »

gavinhoward wrote: post #222
TacoSteemers wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From his comment it sounds like he does jobs driving commercial vehicles (such as trucks or passenger transport). I got this from the mention of a "CDL", commercial driving license.

That's just my backup plan. My wife is currently the breadwinner, and I'm the housekeeper, gardener, handyman, etc.

My man out here living the life we all want.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#246

Post by throwaway_586 »

nicbou wrote: post #213

You hate work, not programming. I left programming as a career, and now use it in support of the website I run. I went from dreading going to work to skipping meals because I can't lift my hands from the keyboard. The passion came back, and it's stronger than ever. You know what's fun? Just building stuff on our own terms, and going outside when the cafeine wears out. I overengineer or hack together as I goddamn plea…

Are you willing to share any more details about how you made this happen? A lot of what you wrote really resonated with me. There's a side project I've been working on for 2 years (and hope to monetize soon) and even though the honeymoon phase of "new project" is well past, I still am so excited to work on it every day.

But I *hate* work, for all the reasons you and others in this thread have mentioned. Recently it's gotten bad enough that I dread getting out of bed in the morning--but I still love getting off work and being able to hack on my side project. I'm constantly being exposed to advice on HN and the like that entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, but goddamn if it still doesn't seem like the best thing in the world to me. I don't need a huge salary or even great work-life balance (at this stage of my life, anyway), but I definitely do feel the need to work on something I actually give a shit about and have that freedom of owning the product myself.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#247

Post by sockaddr »

kurtbuilds wrote: post #38

You are anxious about things constantly breaking, and you work in Javascript. No surprise. Try learning Rust. Your anxiety of things constantly breaking will disappear. I've been coding for about 20 years. My joy of coding would be gone if not for Rust. Instead, writing code is my primary hobby today, in addition to it being (part of) my job professionally.

This is my approach to solve this same problem for myself.

I wanted a more deterministic and reasoned approach to things. Also as another person stated elsewhere, practicing minimalistic engineering where you roll your own instead of mindlessly bringing in another library can help sometimes.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#248

Post by digitalsushi »

scottLobster wrote: post #202
twh270 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very reactionary take here. Blaming developers for everything that's wrong is just as bad-wrong as blaming everything on management, the C-suite, capitalism, or anything else. I've worked with some very ignorant, lazy, incompetent, individuals. Some had 'programmer' or 'developer' in their title, others were managers or product owners or QA, etc. etc. I do agree with your last point. I expect the real-world consequen…

I think he's focusing on the word "dabble", and how unprofessional it sounds. I'd be inclined to agree. I'm a developer and would never say I "dabble" in code. It just sounds light, playful and uncommitted. If your goal at work is to "dabble" in code because you're "passionate" about it, you have an unprofessional mindset. You're putting your passion above the mission. Maybe reading too much into a couple of words, p…

As the commenter above who used those words, I stand by them: my influence over code these days is, indeed, light, playful, and uncommitted. I'm the art teacher who draws a single line on the canvas of the student whom is stuck, and then walk away. That's my role, to exist on my team and help them navigate this red tape by dabbling with their code. If this costs me the Next Big Thing, so be it.

This modern mindset, that we're always interviewing for the next job, even between HN comments, is exhausting and just funnels us further into exhaustion.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#249

Post by engineeringwoke »

_trackno5 wrote: post #228

Take this as constructive advice: stop expecting your job to be fulfilling. Yes, most jobs are filled with corporate drudgery. Business doesn't generally require tough (technical) problems to be solved. The point of business is always to make money by serving the customer. You need to find a way to thrive in that environment otherwise you'll just drown. I work on boring-ass bank payment stuff. I spend my days writing…

Great advice

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#250

Post by gavinhoward »

lampshades wrote: post #245
gavinhoward wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just my backup plan. My wife is currently the breadwinner, and I'm the housekeeper, gardener, handyman, etc.

My man out here living the life we all want.

Heh, it's not as great for me.

It's actually depressing for me that my wife is the breadwinner. I want to be able to do something.

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