Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#291

Post by greenyoda » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

llpg wrote: post #267

chuck3201 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also not trying to sound dismissive or condescending, but it really seems weird to me that if somebody says they are have been doing something for 20 years and now they are bored of it, then they should consider seeing a therapist? I mean, there are plenty of things I used to like that I don't anymore, should I go see a therapist every time my interests change?

I'm sorry but you are reducing a career to a mere interest. Changing hobbies is not the same as trying to change what you did for a living for the past decade.

Careers are not cast in stone. Some people do change their careers if they realize that there's something else that they'd really rather be doing with their lives.

I've met an artist who became a doctor, a lawyer who became a stockbroker, a software developer who became a full-time professional musician, a professor who started a hedge fund, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#292

Post by cutler » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

apotheon wrote: post #287

cutler wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been stuck on the horns of this dilemma for a while, at least for choice of a scripting language. Ruby and Python adoption is pretty similar if you're working in web devlopment rather than data science. In London the number of Rails and Django jobs is fairly equal. Agree, though, Python is racing adhead of Ruby in general and that makes me sad.

From what I've seen, specifically-Ruby jobs tend to pay more than specifically-Python jobs (and more than specifically-Java jobs, for that matter), and while Rails and Django seem kinda balanced in some areas, in others Rails beats the tar out of Django for startup market share.

I don't know about that. Search angel.co and you'll find 36 hits for Ruby on Rails/London and 50 for Django/London. Same ratio on Indeed.co.uk/London.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#293

Post by cutler » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

riantogo wrote: post #138

holografix wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be PHP? No offence but you’d get so much more from learning Python and the barrier to entry really isn’t that high. The hardest hurdle initially is to set up a “virtual environment” which means you have a project by project collection of all the packages you need instead of installing everything globally. Setting up virtual environments used to be a pain. Today it’s so easy: 1. Make sure you have Pyth…

It need not be PHP. Just that I'm most familiar with PHP and ASP.net from back in the day. I'm confident that I can pick up most languages. I will look into Python and Django. But honestly the setup steps already scare me a bit :)

ASP.Net has moved on a bit and can now be hosted on Linux or Mac. ASP.Net Core 3.1, which will become the all-new integrated ASP.Net 5 at the end of the year, offers a much more mature developer experience without all the MS lock-in (MS SQL Server / Windows IIS etc.). The free version of Visual Basic actually runs pretty well on Mac OS X.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#294

Post by christophergs » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

discordance wrote: post #71

DenisM wrote: post #32

Feynman described his run-in with burnout, you may find his experience interesting. I quoted a piece below, but the book is more persuasive with more intricacies of his situation. Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. [...] So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything,…

Great book and a very relevant story. Read up about Feynman and his depression after being involved in the Manhattan project, and how he overcame that by 'playing' with the wobbling plate problem.

Imagine what a mind-fuck it must have been to be on the Manhattan project! They probably wondered if they would be responsible for the end of humanity...and I guess the jury is still out on that one.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#295

Post by say-vagnes » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

tomg wrote: post #42

tfleming wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was it about JavaScript that wanted you to leave programming? I'm just curious.

As someone considering leaving the web development industry after 12 years: JavaScript is a never ending grind. Callbacks, then Bluebird, then Promises, then a sync await. a new testing framework every six months. a new web framework every couple of years. aimless, massive changes to the language (classes in a prototyped language? Why not). JavaScript then coffeescript then three versions of typescript. too many UI l…

I've found that this grind is conquerable. There are only so many ways to go before you start to see the fundamental patterns, and friction in picking up anything new becomes seriously minimal. It's like how some other comments are, talking about how most of programming is really just data access and some clever gluing of frameworks. Or like how there are already software patterns, especially in OP.

My point is, you start to glimpse these overarching patterns as you interact with different takes, and you learn what works and what doesn't, ultimately empowering you to intelligently make tradeoffs or designs of your own. The chaos of web development is, IMO, because it was a new frontier, and a lot of inexperienced leadership occurred. This was compounded by bootcamps churning out people experienced only in Framework X, causing poor re-implementations of nearly _everything else_ inside Framework X.

It sounds like you feel like you _have_ to keep up with these things - perhaps someone else on the team is constantly insisting on migration, but they don't have to go through and tediously migrate and test everything. I'd suspect this lack of autonomy is at the core of your dissatisfaction. You can, and should, say no to a lot of trends, and if you do pick up something new, you should be able to clearly articulate why it's valuable, and these values should be more than superficial.

Another thing worth noting is that the release you work on today is the "legacy, painful" code of tomorrow. But that's a good problem to have - it got the job done. It just happened to get it done in one way, when there are really N ways, and so obviously the numbers game will work against you eventually, even in the imaginary case where the implementation is perfect.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#296

Post by _bxg1 » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

I would start by taking a look at this article; it helped me understand what it is that I personally get out of programming: https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/

But I would also say, I don't think there's anything wrong with not enjoying it any more. Few people can do something for decades and still take joy in it. It's great if you can rekindle the fire, but it's also okay if your interests drift elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#297

Post by _bxg1 » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

konart wrote: post #261

matesz wrote: post #136

Great write-up on that subject is in the first chapter of "Mythical Man-Month". Here is small excerpt. Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward? First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight…

>Here is small excerpt. ...that has nothing to do with the problem in my opinion. Yes, programming is fun in general but then you come in touch with the reality of the job only to find out once again that 1. you are not making things, most of the time you maintain some old crap because nobody wants to spend time and money on building a new better version etc 2. The thing you are working on is useful but you can't rea…

Yes, I've started doing personal projects as a therapeutic exercise.

My personal projects used to be about the end goal: making something that I want to make but don't get to at work.

Lately they've been more about the exercise: the sheer pleasure of writing code that's my own, that will always be my own, that works well and all lives in my head, even if what it actually does isn't especially new or interesting. It's like a digital zen garden.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#298

Post by _bxg1 » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

boris wrote: post #171

matesz wrote: post #136

Great write-up on that subject is in the first chapter of "Mythical Man-Month". Here is small excerpt. Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward? First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight…

And the rest of the book deals with why it is more often than not painful. In summary, it's complexity. Brooks argues that software, being a pure thought-stuff, is also the most complex thing we attempt to build. And it's even worse now than in his time with any concern for quality taking a back seat in the face of competitive pressures. So it's not really surprising that slapping together ever more complex systems o…

It's so weird to me that software's complexity is such a force of nature.

My instinct is that no implementation of a piece of software should ever need to be more complex than the idea of it is (fully and precisely articulated, of course). Yet the code is usually orders of magnitude more complex than that. I don't understand why we can't solve this problem.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#299

Post by darepublic » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

konart wrote: post #261

matesz wrote: post #136

Great write-up on that subject is in the first chapter of "Mythical Man-Month". Here is small excerpt. Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward? First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight…

>Here is small excerpt. ...that has nothing to do with the problem in my opinion. Yes, programming is fun in general but then you come in touch with the reality of the job only to find out once again that 1. you are not making things, most of the time you maintain some old crap because nobody wants to spend time and money on building a new better version etc 2. The thing you are working on is useful but you can't rea…

It does have to do with the problem. Your points only go to show why people grow to hate coding despite the enjoyment it once gave. My own suggestion is to try to create something not for money or fame but simply because you think it is good and take whatever time you need on it.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#300

Post by iLemming » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

djhaskin987 wrote: post #249

beders wrote: post #18

I had the same issue. Then I went back to the roots: Lisp And learned Clojure. You will feel like you know nothing. You will feel handicapped. You will be confused. Then, one day, you will understand what simplicity means and how Clojure's design embraces that more than in any other language I know. By then you will have embraced the flying-by-your-pants-exploratory style of programming at the REPL. And don't want to…

And then you get so good at clojure that repl is "just another style" and it's not much different from Python in terms of effort or thought. After all, Python has a repl too, they just call it a shell. I have gotten burned out of my personal clojure projects same as anything. It's just a language people. Whether speaking Japanese or English, it's just a language. Yes culture is a part of it, but it doesn't imbue the…

> After all, Python has a repl too, they just call it a shell.

No. Most non-lispy (non-homoiconic) languages do not have "true" REPLs (and that includes Python as well). At best they are just that - interactive shells. To understand the distinction, one has to give a sincere heartfelt attempt to use a Lisp. Having able to evaluate any expression and sub-expression without any preceding ceremony is extremely empowering. There's a massive difference in the workflow - any experienced Lisper can attest to that. The benefits of homoiconicity are incredibly underrated in modern programming. Perhaps you just haven't used Lisp for long enough to learn how to appreciate it.

> It's just a language people.

Yes, it is. There are many different ways to express something like "number 42" - using ordinary objects like sticks, or by counting numbers out loud, or by writing the amount using words, or by applying mathematical sigma notation. And Mathematics is just a language as well. And when it comes to expressing something far less trivial than natural numbers, we have not yet discovered|invented better ways.

That all been said - Lisp syntax is not without certain disadvantages. But in many cases - the benefits outweigh the cost. That is why Lisp as an idea is still relevant, even after over six decades. And until we figure out (discover?) a better way, the ideas behind Lisp still would be very useful.