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The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

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Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#31

Post by jhayward »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #25
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #15

As somebody else who started coding in the mid 80s I feel this is one of the disconnects of the interview process: interviews evaluate you on the basis of an "80s programming model" where if you needed a red black tree library, you likely had to write it on your own. It would be a lot more representative of today's work if you were asked: given these 3 github repos with packages that all purport to do X, which one wo…

>I sometimes feel like doing an Ask HN about "how do you find a coding job where you actually code most of the day when you are 20 years into your career" Find a company who requires any non-approved outside code, no matter how well known and even if using an already approved license, to go through a multi-month approval process that is almost always longer than the current project's allotted timeline. As it is, if I…

I don't want to seem sarcastic, since this is a genuine question: What are the positive aspects that would induce you to work or stay in such an environment?

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#32

Post by nogbit »

markets prefer efficiency and using best of breed 3rd party software/libs etc is efficient vs. everyone re-inventing the wheel (inefficient).

So much of programming these days is glue code, even with IOT, devices and sdk's and libs are getting better and better.

The creativity of today comes from ingenious ways of developing new processes the arise from gluing together existing ones.

If you want to be doing greenfield algos go get a PHD in comp sci...and stay at the uni.

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#33

Post by wiz21c »

Having programmed alone in the eighties, I can just feel it's much better.

For example, I needed to do some UI but back then I hadn't the money to buy a toolkit (Windows was still some years away). Therefore I had to spend much time on making a UI and that UI was just a small concern to me.

Today, I have an idea for a program, then I gather all the libs I can to progress as fast as possible and I just need to code the missing/most important bits.

That is, I can concentrate on what's really important and leave plenty of the 80-other-percent to the open source community...

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#35

Post by user5994461 »

marssaxman wrote: post #29
alkonaut wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you miss doing proper algorithmic coding and feel stuck gluing frameworks between a db and a web browser, you should just try to avoid web related development. In embedded, desktop, games and a ton of other disciplines, there is lots of old school and fun dev and a minimal amount of CRUD boilerplate.

Yes, this has worked well for me. Stay out of web development and it's not hard to spend your time doing "real" programming. Embedded work is especially good if you feel nostalgic about 80s-style PC hacking - the downside is that product cycles are limited by the hardware side, so the pace can feel really slow.

> Embedded work is especially good if you feel nostalgic about 80s-style PC hacking.

True, and reciprocally, it is terrible if you hate it. Back to the world of having no debugger, zero tool, potentially no auto completion and unable to do a print.

I still remember an old embedded IDE, when I scrolled down or up with the mouse, the code sometimes becomes a screen of garbage. It's not a display bug, if you save the file, it really become garbage of random characters :D

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#36

Post by gmarx »

Another huge difference was how slow compilers were. Programming is a completely different task when you don't mind hitting compile. I remember programming as a kid in the 1980s with my older brother. He would hit compile and we would wait and wait and wait and finally get an error. After a few times he would slam his fists on the keyboard in frustration.

These days I sometimes compile rather than looking up the correct syntax for something.

Fast cycles changes everything. When you don't get up for a cup of coffee during compiles you program differently, learn about your code differently and can think abiout high level design more

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#37

Post by user5994461 »

jhayward wrote: post #31
BearGoesChirp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I sometimes feel like doing an Ask HN about "how do you find a coding job where you actually code most of the day when you are 20 years into your career" Find a company who requires any non-approved outside code, no matter how well known and even if using an already approved license, to go through a multi-month approval process that is almost always longer than the current project's allotted timeline. As it is, if I…

I don't want to seem sarcastic, since this is a genuine question: What are the positive aspects that would induce you to work or stay in such an environment?

You can code all day and stay in your corner without any external hassle.

That process being enforced will ensure that most code is buggy and development is totally unproductive. That will usually create an environment where noone expect anything from developers and you have zero accountability.

if it all goes well, you can toy around all day and not have to ship anything, still getting a paycheck, and not risking the comparison to your peers.

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#38

Post by crazygringo »

This really brings me back. I used to write "algorithms" all the time, then at some point it just turned into debugging SQL queries. When I was younger, it was so much more "real" programming. But it's easy to look at things with rose-colored glasses, because there were two huge problems.

First, programming was sooo much slower. Nowadays there's a function or a library for everything. Back then, if you wanted to serialize something to disk, you had to write a serialization function first. Fun, but SLOW.

And secondly, debugging was even moooore slower. The amount of time wasted on trial and error was astounding. Nowadays, if a library or browser or OS is misbehaving, a quick search will usually find the problem and workaround options. Back then, it could easily take days and days to try different solutions (hence the "invention" and "creativity") until one turned out to work, and it might not ever work at all.

So while the author says:

> I have to admit I think programming was actually more fun back then. Without all the modern trappings of working as a programmer that suck major time out of your day we were able to spend a majority of every day actually programming.

What I remember is a majority of every day spent debugging mysterious problems with OS calls and libraries, or writing "grunt" algorithm code for stuff there ought to be a function for already, as opposed to writing the fun new stuff. And let's not even talk about waiting minutes to recompile, or how primitive debugging tools were back then.

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#39

Post by jackhack »

I didn't see anybody mention compile times. Today, it is instant -- click to run.

My first programming job - our product was a CAD package for Windows 2.1 and the new v3.0 beta. It took 9 hours to do a full recompile on our fastest computer, a fancy new 486dx-33 with 8MB of RAM!

NINE HOURS TO COMPILE.

Now I get impatient if it takes more than 15 seconds to compile, build the firmware image, download it to hardware and reboot.

It's a different world, for sure.

I think it makes us a little careless. The approach to coding is different. THEN there was a huge penalty to break the build, and we tended to think through a solution very carefully before implementing it. Now, I'll confess, I'm just as likely to plug in some magic numbers and see what happens, or set a breakpoint down in the guts of some heavy code and see what's happening as I am to very carefully think through all the permutations and be sure of everything before hitting Go.

Re: The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s

#40

Post by user5994461 »

pavlov wrote: post #30
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #15

As somebody else who started coding in the mid 80s I feel this is one of the disconnects of the interview process: interviews evaluate you on the basis of an "80s programming model" where if you needed a red black tree library, you likely had to write it on your own. It would be a lot more representative of today's work if you were asked: given these 3 github repos with packages that all purport to do X, which one wo…

If doctors were hired like programmers, they would be quizzed on chemistry trivia and then asked to mix their own drugs in vials using raw pharmaceutical ingredients.

Pharmacists actually have to mix some drugs and that's part of the training.
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