111–120 of 143 posts
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Hoh! I spend most of my time figuring out pipenv (not my design choice!) .
Python packaging is now a solved problem. Use Poetry. Resolves all your dependencies and manages your virtual environments. Also lets you build and publish your own projects with a few commands. https://python-poetry.org/
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Aren't a lot of jobs about solving problems? A therapist solves psychological problems. A lawyer solves problems between people and organizational entities. A surgeon solves medical problems. The reason I'm asking this question is because a few groups proudly say that they are problem solvers. The most notable groups that I've seen are programmers and the consulting industry. But who isn't solving problems? Why this…
>But who isn't solving problems? Unskilled labor. Unskilled labor is there to execute a solution. Programmers (and others) are expected to innovate. Its important to remember that instead of simply cranking out code for the facet of the problem that happens to be immediately in front of you.
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A game has everything to do with the real world. A game is only successful if real-world people want to play it.
Ok, so when u make an unsuccessful game youre not solving problems?
Entertaining games solve people's desire to be entertained.
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This classification of applications as CRUD or not CRUD is not helpful. It‘s like thinking about software as just IO or as just some sort of transformation or even as just some sort of function. It says nothing about the complexity and very little about the structure of the problem at hand.
Maybe a better way to put it is: that the end result is just a website where data is moved around and/or some calculations are done. The whole infrastructure/architecture thing are just strategies on where to place data, how to move data, when to do calculation in the name of mitigating load or making future changes easier. Ultimately, the end result is we're just building interactive documents. "Interactive document…
And of course software development is about solving problems. And of course it‘s not just about where to place data.
We can make our interfaces more intuitive. We can make our documentation clearer and closer to the user's terminology. Our examples can be more explicit and tuned to people's common use cases. Our FAQ can address actual frequently asked questions instead of what we guess people will ask. We can treat FAQs as bug lists/things to improve so people stop asking.
If code is the only tool we use, we'll always write more code which comes with costs now and down the road.
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There's a real lack of humility among our industry, especially in the AI space. Literally you can google "AI solves world peace" or "AI solves COVID-19" and you'll hit an article. We also call ourselves ninjas when most of us are just building hugely complex infrastructure behind what is ultimately just a CRUD website.
The downvotes are really telling. Don't point out the hubris on HN.
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Aren't a lot of jobs about solving problems? A therapist solves psychological problems. A lawyer solves problems between people and organizational entities. A surgeon solves medical problems. The reason I'm asking this question is because a few groups proudly say that they are problem solvers. The most notable groups that I've seen are programmers and the consulting industry. But who isn't solving problems? Why this…
I think it's a reaction to programmers' particular tendency to focus on things that aren't best serving the goal of solving the problem at hand. Programmers often have a "pet" focus that relates to what they enjoy: performance optimizations, writing "clean" code, using some particular pattern or technology they like or want to try out, etc. None of those things are bad as long as they don't take precedent over solvin…
Unfortunately, that's not the same as solving for the actual biz need. This is a key reason why IT has a reputation for failed projects. What's delivered - even tho it was what the client wanted - turns out to not meet the (never defined) need. Wants are not the same as needs; sometimes the difference is significant.
Editorial: I had a semi heated exchange with a proj manager a couple weeks ago. He said, "The client like this (i.e., example from another site). This is what you need to build." I asked why the client liked it; what was the underlying biz need that the proposed solution satisfied? I never got an answer.
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By extension (and legitimate curiosity), who _isn't_ solving an actual problem in his day job? I can think of many classes of artists, but cannot put a blank statement for _all_ of them.
Some artists, I believe, are playing the game of creating and solving problems - where they make up the rules so that interesting problems can arise. J.S. Bach and his canons for example. It may also be joked that some politicians aren't solving actual problems (but creating new ones) in their day job.
By creating problems, they solve a problem of a lack of suitable problems. Thus creating the much needed liquidity in the free market of problems.