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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

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Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#231

Post by powvans »

drumdance wrote: post #213
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my late forties and have been a professional developer for 25+ years. I agree with what you said in your comment, but this stood out: "You might be dead tomorrow; you might as well enjoy today." This is not a bad way to live, but as I get older I am increasingly aware that there will be a day when I'm dead tomorrow. And for that reason I'm increasingly less interested in spending time in the state where "time…

I'm about the same age as you. The passage of time is shockingly fast unless I do things to slow it down. I remember moments from my college days that I can pinpoint to the year they happened. That thing that happened sophomore year? I know it happened sophomore year because I did it with my roommate at the time. But nowadays I'll watch a movie on Netflix thinking it came out just in the past year or two, only to dis…

> I think having kids, which I have not done, might slow time down a bit.

It's a paradox best expressed by the old adage: the days are long, but the years are short.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#232

Post by quaunaut »

ulkesh wrote: post #190
kdamken wrote: post #174

I think this guy may actually just be dumb. Yes, C-Suite positions make more money, and get to make more decisions. If he wanted to do that, it sounds like he could have at any time. Of course just being a programmer would earn you less. > Being a programmer for nearly 35 years... > I doubt I will ever be able to really retire. How do you have a good paying job like being a programmer/the other high level gigs he men…

I agree that materialistic thinking and living certainly contributes to lack of savings/retirement assets. But so does simply having a family, especially as a single parent or when the spouse doesn't work. You might say "well, the spouse can go work," but it's rarely that simple considering the costs of child care and how it may weigh on the spouse's potential salary. Then factor in if the spouse can even get a highe…

In America at least, the median salary for a Programmer is more than enough that with properly managed funds, you can have a spouse who doesn't work and still live quite well.

Remember- the median income here is $52k. I'm in Boise, ID, one of the cheapest cost of living areas in America, and our junior developers start above that.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#233

Post by klochner »

Zelmor wrote: post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misre...

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#234

Post by anon4 »

Zelmor wrote: post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

Lol, that poem. That poem is meant to be taken literally, the poet wrote it for his friend who wouldn't shut up about nature hikes.

You had a much better saying at your disposal "The grass is always greener on the other side". Alas, you chose not to use it and now we don't know how your comment would have turned out, had it made sense.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#235

Post by aantix »

Zelmor wrote: post #24

He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does,…

>My sister started as a programmer 30 years ago but jumped into management [...] My sister has 10X the assets I have.

It's so hilarious that he calls himself a "programmer". With 30+ years of experience, you're a software engineer, an architect, and best of all, a consultant.

Then you charge 5x the normal rate of a salaried engineer, work normal hours, and start accumulating real assets.

He needed to put down the technical books, read a book about personal branding and then he could have had his cake and eaten it too.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#236

Post by lostcolony »

scandox wrote: post #45

"I can still feel the regret of not seeking the challenge of just leadership." He's right. Programmers need to get into leadership, because they have a chance of knowing what "just leadership" might look like. When non-technical people lead technical people, the chance of getting into a good flow is less (though by no means impossible). The problem is that many technical people are not "people" persons. Part of that…

'Leadership' is not a job description. I hate it when people act like it is. Even if your job is making decisions; leadership isn't making decisions, it's making them in such a way that those under you feel empowered by them, rather than powerless in the face of them, and that you take responsibility for any fallout from those decisions rather than letting that shit role down hill.

Everyone I know who has wanted to 'bring leadership' in their role, and nothing else, has been a complete waste of space, at best useless, at worst an obstacle. I have never been glad to have such a person working with me.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#237

Post by VLM »

eru wrote: post #76
askyourmother wrote: post #37

Regrets as a programmer: 1. Every piece of unpolished, unfinished code that management decided should ship to the customers regardless 2. Ever using node and npm. 3. Seeing and living through the train wreck of J2EE and the XML horrors that ensued. 4. Not seeing the beauty in simple functions early on. Not everything needs to be a class or module. 5. Most business problems are political/social - regret every time we…

> 5. Most business problems are political/social - regret every time we were called in to try and provide a "technical" band aid to those same problems. Why? Social and political problems are really hard to solve. If you can use technology to sidestep them, that's exactly the right way to do it.

OP must be very young. In corporate environments there is no sidestepping.

Say there's 20 pounds of work for 10 pounds of (recently downsized) people across multiple departments. The way you'd like to see technology work is turn 20 pound of work into 10 or less pounds of work for the entire company. The way technology is actually used in the real corporate world is your boss has you automate procedures and policies such that you push work out of your department and onto even more overloaded competing departments. That's how the strongest competitors are determined for promotion and bonus.

To some extent its a startup vs old company problem. Trust me, if technology could be applied to solve the whole company wide problem, grandpa would have already done it with punchcards decades ago, the only innovation that happens in old companies is pushing work and blame onto other departments. Hey, I have a number that proves we're now better, and that's all that matters.

The other way it works is as a weapon / scapegoat. They don't wanna work with us and I don't want to force them, or can't make them. But I can tell my programmer to change the bounds checking on that input field and they'll be forced to cooperate or shut down. If it works and they cooperate with us, I'll take the credit, if it fails, I'll blame and fire the programmer. Or if you don't want them to work with us (as in dump work on us) the programmer can sabotage their system, and again you can guess the different pathways for reward and punishment.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#238

Post by FrankyHollywood »

This is very personal. I couldn't sit with the suits talking high level about the future company directions, new improvement and efficiency processes bla bla.

My first job was at a crapy webshop with all juniors. Worst code I've ever seen (except offshore code). Last years I have had projects with developers all >10yrs experience. It is very rewarding!

I like programming, I like technical discussions, and I like to tell management they are wrong (which they very often are). You can have a lot of impact being someone who actually knows what he talks about.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#239

Post by naasking »

wtbob wrote: post #80
forgottenacc56 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript is actually an incredibly flexible and effective language.

> JavaScript is actually an incredibly flexible and effective language. == vs === No integers. Assignment is declaration. Prototypes. Curly brackets & semicolons. Semicolon insertion. It may be flexible (in the sense that an Alfa Romeo driven into a telephone pole at 120 mph is flexible), but it sure as heck ain't effective. JavaScript is the great shame of the computing industry: that it exists, and that it is used,…

The only truly terrible part of JavaScript is all the implicit coercions around equality checking. It would actually be a decent language if it reported type errors instead.

There are a few other smaller issues that are nuisances, like not being able to actually check if a value is a number, but I think coercions cause the most headaches for discoverability and debugging.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#240

Post by elmin »

gear54rus wrote: post #87
wtbob wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JavaScript is actually an incredibly flexible and effective language. == vs === No integers. Assignment is declaration. Prototypes. Curly brackets & semicolons. Semicolon insertion. It may be flexible (in the sense that an Alfa Romeo driven into a telephone pole at 120 mph is flexible), but it sure as heck ain't effective. JavaScript is the great shame of the computing industry: that it exists, and that it is used,…

No amount of cute phrases will change the fact that it is being spread by people who actually understand its flexibility instead of focusing on something that rubs them the wrong way (which, most of the time is the result of working with other, often shiver enterprisey language(s) and thinking that that's how it's done) quite effectively and there's no sign of stopping for its growth. And that is good. With things li…

In my experience Go is a better choice than Node for reliability and stability reasons, rather than performance most of the time.
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