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A Salute to Solo Programmers

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Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#31

Post by codyb »

jorblume wrote: post #12

I'm the only developer in my ad agency of about 80 people. It's super cool to write all my own code, make all my own stack choices. To know that I wrote everything here is a really cool feeling. At the same time, I really miss talking shop with other devs. And given my extremely young age (only a few years out of school) sometimes it can be hard to be sure I'm making the most efficient choices. There's a lot of times…

I'm the same way at a recruiting firm. I worked at a company with a larger dev shop before landing here for about a year and a half thankfully but even so, there's a lot of work that goes into being a single man dev shop.

Communication: Keeping both the recruiters and management in the know about what is going on. This means I need to be decent about planning, bug tracking, tool choices, etc.

No one else is really technical here at all so occasionally you run into the hurdle of "It doesn't look like anything is getting done!". It really means I have to be very good at communicating complex topics to the layman. Not a bad skill to add the repertoire by any stretch of the means though.

Building a small team: There was a fresh grad on the social media team with a Comp Sci degree from NYU. "What's he doing in social media" I exclaimed! Get him over here!". I guess he focused on music instead of computer science at school but he's picking things up.

There's a lot to being a one man team.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#32

Post by westoncb »

ioeu wrote: post #27
westoncb wrote: post #19

I've been doing the (unpaid) solo thing for years, and I'm almost sure I'm gonna give it up now. I built Tiled Text ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be... ) while working at a grocery store and dealing with a repetitive strain injury, and it was a miserable, awful experience. I designed and built this 'abstract visual debugger': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE while my savings s…

Your abstract visual debugger is really cool! I was thinking about pursuing something similar for my bachelor thesis but ended up doing something much different. I'm curious to learn more about your insights regarding the subject, where can I find more information? Also curious to learn what made you go from thinking "this was you" to thinking another lifestyle could make you happier, which lifestyle? Why? Edit: Goin…

Unfortunately I haven't really written on the ideas behind it, though I probably will soon. A couple people asked me to submit it to the 'Future Programming Workshop,' so I was thinking of putting together some kind of writeup—but I had no money to attend.

The main idea was to display a running program's state at the same level of abstraction at which programmers think about their programs. I often found myself writing 'one off' visualizations of data structures for complex pieces of code; this was an attempt at a general solution: it would be able to render all of the different (visual) classes of data structures—the programmer would just need to say which of their data structures should be 'monitored.'

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#33

Post by DrNuke »

Most grunt work is automated and so much knowledge is leveraged even solo-shops can keep all tech together. Good! That said, data from hard-science problems is the new nut to crack. I almost cry thinking of startups like rescale.com, the chance they offer to independent researchers and scientists to do so much more than it can be done in a shared lab or cluster. When I read of $$$ burn rate in the SV, I cringe: one ikea table quoted at $250 is one good full day of work with rescale.com. Unbelievable, make me think VCs and investors should ask for much more value for money when funding science startups.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#34

Post by westoncb »

ioeu wrote: post #27
westoncb wrote: post #19

I've been doing the (unpaid) solo thing for years, and I'm almost sure I'm gonna give it up now. I built Tiled Text ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be... ) while working at a grocery store and dealing with a repetitive strain injury, and it was a miserable, awful experience. I designed and built this 'abstract visual debugger': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE while my savings s…

Your abstract visual debugger is really cool! I was thinking about pursuing something similar for my bachelor thesis but ended up doing something much different. I'm curious to learn more about your insights regarding the subject, where can I find more information? Also curious to learn what made you go from thinking "this was you" to thinking another lifestyle could make you happier, which lifestyle? Why? Edit: Goin…

>... what made you go from thinking "this was you" to thinking another lifestyle could make you happier, which lifestyle? Why?

There are a lot of things that have gone into that question. I would say the biggest thing was that I became aware of the fact that I was always 'in my head' instead of having a more direct interaction with people/environment, and realizing (from a number of sources, but importantly, through meditation) that being not 'in your head'—direct interaction with things—is a major part of feeling content or satisfied (as well as being effective in... most domains). Makes sense if you think about it: you think when you are trying to change something; if nothing needs changing, you don't think and you're content.

Now I'm looking for a balance with social interaction, physical activity, and intellectual work. Since I've been unable to earn money from my own projects, I am giving them up to just do a normal 40hrs/week kind of programming job: if I try to do the job and the projects, there's no time for the balance I want.

After a few years I may get a job that's more physical/social and return to my projects, but for now I need to catch up on finances, and programming is the only way I know how.

Edit: another way of saying the above: anxiety/depression became a problem, and the balance I describe seems to be a major part of the solution.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#35

Post by perlpimp »

"The many superpowers of Apple’s Preview (here and here) does justice to the app’s power and flexibility. Read it and join me in my appreciation for this labor of love from a solo, unnamed programmer who, I’m told, has been at it since the NeXT days."

Preview is one app that is a source of constant admiration and consistency that makes using OS x that much easier. Maybe a single excellent developer can make better call in terms of consistency because applying similar pattern across board is natural where doing so for more than one person requires a whole lot more effort? (communication, keeping up with a style etc.) While on the same subject can there be some way to make reusable components for visual intefaces ala unix commanline and pipes. If so then developers can do well developing bits of code, each doing one thing well and let users construct their own "solutions"

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#36

Post by genericacct »

foldor wrote: post #30
dagw wrote: post #21

The game Banished ( http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/ ) is another modern example of an amazing piece of software turned out by a single programmer.

While we're looking at amazing gaming accomplishments my solo programmers, there's also Axiom Verge ( http://www.axiomverge.com/ ) which was released on PS4/PC this year.

Interesting coincidence: both are games. In the business world when you buy an app you probably want to make sure that someone will be able to maintain it even if something happens to the project lead.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#37

Post by rancur »

westoncb wrote: post #19

I've been doing the (unpaid) solo thing for years, and I'm almost sure I'm gonna give it up now. I built Tiled Text ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be... ) while working at a grocery store and dealing with a repetitive strain injury, and it was a miserable, awful experience. I designed and built this 'abstract visual debugger': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE while my savings s…

>along with my girlfriend's patience for being ignored

can you tell us more about that? The passion that drives me is the passion that gets things done. Does she want the paycheck or does she want me? Sometimes I can't give both

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#38

Post by westoncb »

rancur wrote: post #37
westoncb wrote: post #19

I've been doing the (unpaid) solo thing for years, and I'm almost sure I'm gonna give it up now. I built Tiled Text ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be... ) while working at a grocery store and dealing with a repetitive strain injury, and it was a miserable, awful experience. I designed and built this 'abstract visual debugger': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE while my savings s…

>along with my girlfriend's patience for being ignored can you tell us more about that? The passion that drives me is the passion that gets things done. Does she want the paycheck or does she want me? Sometimes I can't give both

I can't really say... In my own case it was partly that I was trying to make a living off my project, and I couldn't spend that much time with her if I was going to build it before money ran out. But at the same time, there was an element of using the project to get away from her, and I think she could tell.

But yeah, finding a balance with these things is tough.

Re: A Salute to Solo Programmers

#39

Post by thoman23 »

Hmm, I think it's easier than ever for the solo programmer. Production deployment is easier, research and knowledge sharing is easier, testing is easier, finding a third party library to help is easier...everything is easier. A good programmer can build a product from beginning to end very easily now.
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