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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

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Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#511

Post by cyphar »

markbnj wrote: post #364

As a working software developer at age 55 I appreciate some of what the author is saying. Your salary peaks. Your upward mobility peaks. People who move into leadership positions quickly pass you in terms of material assets. All true. When has it ever not been true? There's something else that is true: not everyone is suited to be a leader, and there are relatively fewer positions for leaders compared to followers. U…

I don't like the assertion that manager == leader, while developer == follower. Some people got into software development for the engineering aspect, not to deal with bureaucracy. I write software, that's what I enjoy doing. It's not fair to pretend that developers who don't want to be managers aren't leaders in their field.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#512

Post by jkyle »

brbsix wrote: post #466
jkyle wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe you have the right of opportunity, but not of outcome. I may be assuming too much, but in most don't really believe this. For example, I'd wager you firmly believe you have the right to a safe and secure society such that you are relatively confident you will no be randomly murdered in your sleep with no consequences for the murderer. This is exactly a right to the outcome of a minimum level of security i…

You have a right to not have violence initiated against you (e.g. to not be murdered in your sleep). In order to keep this right, you just can't initiate force against someone else. Do you have a right to a "safe and secure society"? I'm not really sure precisely what that is or how it is achieved, but that sounds an awful lot like a privilege. For example, you most certainly do not have the right to be guarded in yo…

> You have a right to not have violence initiated against you

This is a right of outcome. The outcome of not having violence committed against your person or property.

Rights of outcome vs rights of opportunity are a false dichotomy. All rights are a right for some specific outcome and are considered violated when that outcome does not occur.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#513

Post by dinkumthinkum »

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,…

I think referencing Frost is a little dismissive here. The writer has some pretty clear reasons and description of his regret that probably many should pay attention to.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#514

Post by flubert »

tcfunk wrote: post #415
JimboOmega wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, isn't $80k around the point where happiness from income levels off? The advantage of big money isn't just charities and companies - it's having your time back, since you're not tied to getting an income from it.

I feel like $80k must be an outdated number. My wife and I pull in just under $100k together, and we can't even (comfortably) afford a home. Between rent, student loan payments, health insurance, bills, and car loans, and food, I think we maybe have $500 left to throw around each month. If we were paying against a mortgage, that would basically be zero.

>My wife and I pull in just under $100k together, and we can't even (comfortably) afford a home.

You may not be able to afford a house in the area you want, but you can certainly afford a home. Here's one with a mortgage for $89/mo.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/207-1st-Ave-W-Gackle-ND-58...

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#515

Post by honua »

friendzis wrote: post #101
rajeemcariazo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you elaborate more about using node and npm

I am not node developer, but I don't think it solves the problems it is supposed to. Serving pages rendered with node via webserver (nginx, apache) is not the most pleasant experience compared to e.g. python + wsgi npm packages are not packages. It is simply a dependency definition + repository. Pull in package from npm and it is nowhere near usable until you figure out where it actually puts the files you care. You…

> Pull in package from npm and it is nowhere near usable until you figure out where it actually puts the files you care. You only know it's somewhere in `node_pacakges/`.

Not usable for what? All you need to do is `npm install package` then in your project `const package = require('package')` and it's usable. Also, it's `node_modules`, and gulp itself is a task runner for... Node, so I don't understand your point there.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#516

Post by trvz »

daxfohl wrote: post #144
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…

>1. Every piece of unpolished, unfinished code that management decided should ship to the customers regardless Looking back, I view this as a pro. You get to work on more projects that way. I spent five years working with an "ideal" manager that trusted coders to make the deadlines. When I look back on that, while it was the only time I've ever gotten to code things to "perfection", it was also a big black hole of wo…

That is a very reckless attitude - people will use that software, and lose much more time on the problems than it would've taken for the programmers to fix them. And then we go and criticise Apple and other upstream vendors for doing the same thing…

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#517

Post by eru »

VLM wrote: post #237
eru wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

Oh, I've worked in big companies. I was just trying to be an optimist here.

As an example where my optimism is warranted: broken builds. You can either make it a `people problem' and tell people to be super careful; or you go for the technical solution and automate the whole thing, so that only commits that build and pass tests get merged into master.

Of course, there's no office politics in my example; so this was easy.

The humble spreadsheet liberated white collar workers to do automate simple (and not so simple) calculation tasks themselves. No begging the computer folks necessary any more, who can hold your department `hostage' at will.

You can bet that from the point of view of spreadsheet adopters, they sidestepped a whole host of political problems.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#518

Post by dcw303 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #266
dcw303 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind me asking, at what times did you feel the pain? I've been having something similar but always during the night, so I had not made an association with RSI.

Usually after using the mouse or my hands for a couple of hours or so while. If it started happening, anything that compressed my wrist (or something) could begin to set it off. Do you have anything on or around you arms when you sleep (or lie on them?).

Ah, I see. Thanks.

Yeah, I'm probably sleeping in a weird position. I have a history of doing that.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#519

Post by colllectorof »

forgottenacc56 wrote: post #64
romanovcode wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript was designed so that clown on your website moves when you click on it.

JavaScript is actually an incredibly flexible and effective language.

> JavaScript is actually an incredibly flexible and effective language.

My problem with people who say such things is that they almost always have been saying the same thing for many years, while the language itself did several 180° turns and backflips.

"Classes are stupid, we don't need them!" "Look, we have fake classes in ES6!" "Asynchronous code is awesome!" "Asynchronous code is horrible!" "Prototype mutation is awesome and powerful!" "Everything should be functional and immutable!"

If someone considers the current direction of JavaScript good, then they should have considered several previous directions absolutely idiotic. If, however, they are simply oblivious to the incessant flip-flopping of the "mainstream" JavaScript, their opinion about quality of any language is worth very little.

Re: My Biggest Regret as a Programmer

#520

Post by Retra »

nostrademons wrote: post #418
naasking wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a little surprising that 1 + '1' is '11', until you spend a little time and learn the rules instead of fighting them - then you start doing your work in a way that uses that to save time. You are omcpletely underestimating the complexity of JS's implicit coercions. If you haven't already seen it, watch the Wat talk [1]. Finally, the fact that you need the console to even understand the meaning of a code fragme…

> Finally, the fact that you need the console to even understand the meaning of a code fragment is a perfect example of language failure. Isn't that the case for every language with polymorphism? Even C, once you add function pointers to the mix. I've certainly heard polymorphism and OOP criticized on these grounds, but unless you're a hardcore kernel or embedded developer, that ship sailed about 25 years ago. Everyb…

No? Also, there's more than one kind of polymorphism.
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