Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 63 posts

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#11

Post by JamesBarney »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

In real life there are still projects that are failing, that are going over time and budget. There are smart guys on those projects with masters in c.s. who are making completely boneheaded calls that will mean they aren't adding any value.

We can talk about how easy software is and it's just glueing a bunch of components together. But whole we do there are millions of devs that are flailing and failing to do that.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#12

Post by amelius »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

I think the problem is mixing terminologies:

• Programmer: glues together existing tools (your example)

• Software engineer/architect: builds/designs systems that can handle large loads efficiently; invents and applies techniques so the systems can become large while keeping them maintainable

• Computer scientists: invents and analyzes algorithms

That said, roles are usually mixed up as well, where a computer scientist in industry can easily spend 90% of their time programming.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#13

Post by krageon »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

Do you have some examples of places where you have seen this so I can avoid working there? It sounds incredibly boring.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#14

Post by return0 »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

usually when something becomes so mechanical it is automated and the job is eliminated

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#15

Post by urVeryWrong »

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #4
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

What you describe does not look like the typical software developer job at all. Certainly not anyone can write software. In fact, many who see themselves as "coders" are not very good at it themselves. Edit: I've found it's a bit similar to law in terms of skills and mindset. Some people struggle to follow the text of an actual law. Then, drafting an actual law is an even more specialised skill. In both software and…

[dead]

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#16

Post by Tade0 »

krageon wrote: post #13
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

Do you have some examples of places where you have seen this so I can avoid working there? It sounds incredibly boring.

Pick pretty much any front-end related position.

Half of my career has been spent on such things and ironically this was the better paid one.

Apparently doing interesting stuff comes with a pretty hard penalty in terms of compensation.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#17

Post by QuamStiver »

I've been coding professionally for almost three decades, and the pursuit of elegant solutions makes up about 1% of my paid work. The rest of the time I'm fighting constraints: time, money, available resource, risk, all the usual. Very rarely does professional software engineering leave room for art, IMO.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#18

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

golergka wrote: post #9
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

> Nothing special, anyone can do it. That's what I'm thinking every day while I'm working and talking to other developers. But when I try to teach, or help non-coders who decide to take up coding, I am amazed every time to find out that there's one skill that I don't even think about that seems unteachable: structural thinking. I can teach a person how to get an input from a user. I can teach a person how to process…

I know good software engineers who believe in alternative medicines and doubt the efficacy of vaccines. I’ve met some that don’t even know the basics of how an OS or CPU works.

We’re not special as a group. We’re good at some stuff and also really bad at other stuff. Just like everyone else.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#19

Post by revskill »

QuamStiver wrote: post #17

I've been coding professionally for almost three decades, and the pursuit of elegant solutions makes up about 1% of my paid work. The rest of the time I'm fighting constraints: time, money, available resource, risk, all the usual. Very rarely does professional software engineering leave room for art, IMO.

It depends on situations: Your location, your health, age, family, finance,...

If you mostly work on a team, then it's enough to NOT create art.

In my case, i MUST create art, to abstract most of boring stuffs, because of the situation.

That means, i want to spend the least brain work in software engineering as possible with the help of art.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#20

Post by fouc »

amelius wrote: post #12
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

I think the problem is mixing terminologies: • Programmer: glues together existing tools (your example) • Software engineer/architect: builds/designs systems that can handle large loads efficiently; invents and applies techniques so the systems can become large while keeping them maintainable • Computer scientists: invents and analyzes algorithms That said, roles are usually mixed up as well, where a computer scienti…

Not really a mixing of terminology considering that the scientists/engineers are only going to be a small proportion of the coding population.
Post reply on HN