Whatever happened to programming? • Hacker News Board

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#81

Post by tseabrooks » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 1:56 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #61

jdietrich wrote: post #30

My biggest gripe with modern programming is the sheer volume of arbitrary stuff I need to know. My current project has so far required me to know about Python, Django, Google App Engine and it's datastore, XHTML, CSS, JQuery, Javascript, JSON, and a clutch of XML schema, APIs and the like. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for all of it, but it just doesn't seem like what I was promised when I followed SICP for the fi…

It all depends on the context - sure on some platforms (mostly embedded) it's just your binary and the hardware. Anything else, where you start having dependencies on components sourced from elsewhere then you are in this situation. Personally, I don't really see what the problem is - looking at and using other peoples software is usually a great learning experience.

This is why I'm an embedded engineer. I don't want to muddle through all of the 'bajillion' different frameworks, languages, etc. Need a window manager? Wrote one. Need a function not implemented in our custom graphics driver? Implemented it. Want to toy around with speeding up software bitblt? Go for it, and good luck.

Though that doesn't mean we don't use third party libraries, I just think we have far more flexibility in not using them.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#82

Post by nazgulnarsil » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:27 PM UTC

boo hoo, the wild west days of roll your own everything are gone. except they aren't, you just have to be good enough that companies working on the forefront of non-standard (yet) hardware will hire you.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#83

Post by BigZaphod » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:31 PM UTC

nw wrote: post #77

jdietrich wrote: post #30

My biggest gripe with modern programming is the sheer volume of arbitrary stuff I need to know. My current project has so far required me to know about Python, Django, Google App Engine and it's datastore, XHTML, CSS, JQuery, Javascript, JSON, and a clutch of XML schema, APIs and the like. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for all of it, but it just doesn't seem like what I was promised when I followed SICP for the fi…

> My biggest gripe with modern programming is the sheer volume of arbitrary stuff I need to know. My current project has so far required me to know about Python, Django, Google App Engine and it's datastore, XHTML, CSS, JQuery, Javascript, JSON, and a clutch of XML schema, APIs and the like. The situation seems ripe for a disruptive technology to emerge.

Here's a project that's taking a crack at disrupting this situation: http://cappuccino.org/ I know there's a few others like this, but it's the first one that popped into my head.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#84

Post by wlievens » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:36 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #57

wlievens wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why some people keep praising SQL like this. SQL is great for complex queries that contain valuable logic, but it's not expressive at all when you want to do something trivial. Getting all the attributes of user X is so much more work, and harder to maintain, in SQL than it is in any ORM. "select name, pass, hash, email, realname from user where id = ?" versus session.get("User", x)

SQL is not particularly nice for complex queries, either. The underlying model is good, but the particular syntax they chose is verbose, confusing, and non-portable.

I kind of agree, but I was conceding the most reasonable argument to the parent.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#85

Post by wlievens » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:37 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #76

james2vegas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'SELECT * FROM user WHERE id = ?' OR 'SELECT getUser(?)' presuming you have a stored procedure/function getUser that returns the data you need, and you should (or a view, at least)

SELECT *? A function in the SELECT statment? Oh dear god, a blasphemer! The former can cause performance problems if you have blobs as well as being an unnecessary security hole, the latter can cause performance problems over large datasets as it often forces the execution plan away from a set based solution.

The fact that using the most trivial of examples triggers a discussion in on itself helps to prove my point.

Nobody debates session.getUser(id)

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#86

Post by lurkerperpetual » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:43 PM UTC

There is fun and exciting work to be done still. The fact that most of us chose to work on boring plumbing has little to do with programming having changed; it became a more diverse field a majority of which is 'commoditized'.

So why complain? Go do something interesting. If the problems you are solving as your daily routine are themselves boring why would the process of solving them be any more fun?

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#87

Post by DanielBMarkham » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:47 PM UTC

andywood wrote: post #42

Wow. I sympathize with this very, very strongly. I think this captures the root of the career frustration that I experience 70% of the time. I seem to spend way too much time on what I call "guessing the magic password" - tracking down that one bit of punctuation in some obscure value in some xml configuration file that makes my whole system fail silently in one environment. I might spend 5 hours beating my head agai…

I seem to spend way too much time on what I call "guessing the magic password"

It's always been this way, but lately it's gotten worse and worse.

You need to fix a problem. Your friends tell you about technology X which seems exactly what you need. So you pick it up, take a quick look at the samples, and wham! Within minutes the thing is working exactly like it is supposed to!

Well almost. There's this little part that's broken that ruins the whole thing and then you spend hours or days (yes, perhaps weeks) digging up obscure configuration documentation and tweaking APIs in ancient Klingon, sacrificing turtles to Ba'al or whatever else it takes to get the damn thing working like it's supposed to.

Then it's on to something new.

The funny part of this whole story is -- when your friends ask you about how programming in X was, you are more than likely to brag about how easy it was to solve your problem. After all, the bulk of the problem was fixed almost instantly. Don't want to look like a dweeb. And so the cycle of pain continues.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#88

Post by MikeTaylor » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:50 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #30

My biggest gripe with modern programming is the sheer volume of arbitrary stuff I need to know. My current project has so far required me to know about Python, Django, Google App Engine and it's datastore, XHTML, CSS, JQuery, Javascript, JSON, and a clutch of XML schema, APIs and the like. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for all of it, but it just doesn't seem like what I was promised when I followed SICP for the fi…

jdietrich, you have EXACTLY nailed what I was trying to say (but in about 1/10th as many words as I needed). Thank you. I have linked to, and quoted, this comment in my followup article, http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/whatever-happened-to-... -- hope that's OK.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#89

Post by pw0ncakes » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 2:58 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #44

gte910h wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, BOA in ATL couldn't find enough super good math/finance/C++ programmers, for instance.

Of course to do that you have to live in ATL. And work for BOA. Those were two excellent reasons that I had no interest when their recruiter came calling to ask if I was interested in applying to work there.

And write C++.

Re: Whatever happened to programming?

#90

Post by pw0ncakes » Thu, Mar 04, 2010, 3:24 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #59

gte910h wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, BOA in ATL couldn't find enough super good math/finance/C++ programmers, for instance.

It's because the people that are good with math, finance, and programming don't want to use C++ (or live in Atlanta). Remove the C++, and it becomes much easier to find people. Look at how successful companies like Jane Street Capital are in recruiting, for example, even though the pool of people that know OCaml is much smaller than the pool of people that know C++. (My experience with people that know math and finan…

I know a bit about JSC. They are brilliant at recruiting and have some amazingly smart people.