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Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#331

Post by apotheon »

afiori wrote: post #312
apotheon wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make any sense. Use the right tool for the job. If "the winner" was all that mattered, we'd all be using Java now, and it would remain the top language forever, as long as it makes any sense at all to use -- not even requiring it to make more sense than other options.

Technological progress often evolves as a Scale Free Network[1] where the nodes with most present activities are likely to see the highest investment. It is less of a problem for mature ecosystem and tools, but being in the "not winner" position will likely induce negative effects in the long term technological progress. (I am sure there are many counterexamples) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network

If we assume, basically, that only The Winner Language should ever be used, we either end up with a long-term glut on technology churn (e.g. JavaScript's miserable state of instability right now, but for everything and not just JavaScript) or rapid development of novel forms of mediocrity (Java), and nobody should ever bother with Python, in which case the previous commentary still makes no sense because Python isn't "The Winner".

Sufficient investment for significant ongoing value is a matter of a threshold relevant to the particular needs served by the target technology, not of rank. As long as there's "enough" interest, it will have as much likelihood of stable or increasing value for (appropriately targeted) users as anything else.

Meanwhile, too much investment from too-big interested parties can ruin something pretty thoroughly.

Things are not as straightforwardly popularity-contest-driven as you seem to suggest.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#332

Post by afiori »

apotheon wrote: post #331
afiori wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technological progress often evolves as a Scale Free Network[1] where the nodes with most present activities are likely to see the highest investment. It is less of a problem for mature ecosystem and tools, but being in the "not winner" position will likely induce negative effects in the long term technological progress. (I am sure there are many counterexamples) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network

If we assume, basically, that only The Winner Language should ever be used, we either end up with a long-term glut on technology churn (e.g. JavaScript's miserable state of instability right now, but for everything and not just JavaScript) or rapid development of novel forms of mediocrity (Java), and nobody should ever bother with Python, in which case the previous commentary still makes no sense because Python isn't…

> Things are not as straightforwardly popularity-contest-driven as you seem to suggest.

Popularity contests are not simple.

Programming is an huge field comprising many unsyncronized industries and fields. Each of them can have its own winner (or winners) and they interact in complex ways. How is beyond the point.

My claim is that having the most mindshare/resources is the simplest way to keep having the most mindshare/resources. Few technologies rely only o this to stay alive, but a relevant factor is that differently than many other (often technical) advantages this one has a positive feedback loop.

Coming back to the original topic, this might mean that even if you invest a lot in the "best" tool to solve your problems it is possible that the lack of ecosystem around it (due to other people choosing "worse" tools for the same problems) makes it a losing investment.

Of course things are not linear and even the best interpolations have only intervals of validity, yet general long-term trends and cycles exist.

If you want you can add a rate of decay to the weight of nodes in the model, but the point remain: resource distribution is typically not fair in any a priori sense; often it simply scale with the already available resources.

Example: Bitcoin is the among biggest cryptocoins mostly because it was the biggest at some point.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#333

Post by apotheon »

afiori wrote: post #332
apotheon wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume, basically, that only The Winner Language should ever be used, we either end up with a long-term glut on technology churn (e.g. JavaScript's miserable state of instability right now, but for everything and not just JavaScript) or rapid development of novel forms of mediocrity (Java), and nobody should ever bother with Python, in which case the previous commentary still makes no sense because Python isn't…

> Things are not as straightforwardly popularity-contest-driven as you seem to suggest. Popularity contests are not simple. Programming is an huge field comprising many unsyncronized industries and fields. Each of them can have its own winner (or winners) and they interact in complex ways. How is beyond the point. My claim is that having the most mindshare/resources is the simplest way to keep having the most mindsha…

> Popularity contests are not simple.

I did not, in fact, say they were.

> My claim is that having the most mindshare/resources is the simplest way to keep having the most mindshare/resources.

That's largely true. Of course, having "enough" mindshare/resources is plenty, generally; one needn't necessarily have "the most". I don't see Ruby or Rails going away any time soon, even if your local area's angel.co listings show a 40% higher rate of job postings that explicitly mention Django in the headline. Development is still quite active both on, and with, the language and the framework.

> Coming back to the original topic, this might mean that even if you invest a lot in the "best" tool to solve your problems it is possible that the lack of ecosystem around it (due to other people choosing "worse" tools for the same problems) makes it a losing investment.

If your choice is Smalltalk, that might be true. If it's actually a very active community around a language and framework that provide extremely good productivity support and a lot of advanced tooling constantly attracting more innovation and heavily used in some sectors, like Ruby and Rails, it's not so true. There's pretty much guaranteed (absent government-granted monopolies) to be quite a bit of diversity in "popular enough" languages and tools for any high-traffic development sector, and "startups" definitely qualifies as such a sector of development as a field of professional work. The "winner" approach you seem to want to champion would have room for basically two options, and both of them have "Java" in the names of their most popular implementations, so arguing about the relative popularity of a Python framework in one corner of the world is irrelevant at best given your evidently intended thesis.

> Example: Bitcoin is the among biggest cryptocoins mostly because it was the biggest at some point.

This is a good point, but does not address the fact that this doesn't mean discounting Decred or Monero as a terrible choice for any useful timescale is the obvious best option.

Ruby on Rails is more popular in some areas than Django. Ruby on Rails gets a lot of time and money investment. Ruby on Rails is likely to be a good, stable choice for years to come. That example illustrates the fact that always choosing "the winner" doesn't make sense if "the winner" involves choosing the second-worst tool for your specific job out of a field of a dozen or more available tools.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#334

Post by cdeutsch »

tomg wrote: post #42
tfleming wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was it about JavaScript that wanted you to leave programming? I'm just curious.

As someone considering leaving the web development industry after 12 years: JavaScript is a never ending grind. Callbacks, then Bluebird, then Promises, then a sync await. a new testing framework every six months. a new web framework every couple of years. aimless, massive changes to the language (classes in a prototyped language? Why not). JavaScript then coffeescript then three versions of typescript. too many UI l…

Nailed it!

I've been programming professionally for 20 years and doing exclusively frontend with React since about 2014.

After the whole React Hooks thing, I can't freaking wait to do something else; and I'm absolutely livid with their decision to promote Hooks.

They should have forked React instead of introducing that into a somewhat mature ecosystem. Already went through this fractured bullshit with Coffeescript, and a million other frameworks of the moment. The JS community just doesn't learn, and when you see a big player like Facebook making the same mistakes, there really isn't much hope.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#335

Post by ptyyy »

_kwmj wrote: post #281
quicklime wrote: post #231

I became a manager. This didn't, in and of itself, make me rediscover the joy of programming. But it did free up the mental energy I needed to program outside of work, for fun. As a 9-5 programmer, I often found myself too mentally exhausted to do any coding outside of work. This meant that over the years, programming became just a job, and nothing more. But once I changed career tracks, I found that I had the energy…

I have been coding for almost a decade and I don't think I have come home any day and felt like, "oh, today I will code this!". Nope. I always leave work at work - coding, studying, learning about work. It's not really a discipline, or an attempt to keep work and life separate. I just don't feel like it. After work it's just reading, films, walks, sports etc for me. I used to get bothered by it seeing other people co…

>I don't think I have come home any day and felt like, "oh, today I will code this!". Nope. I always leave work at work - coding, studying, learning about work. It's not really a discipline, or an attempt to keep work and life separate. I just don't feel like it.

I'm in the same boat. I've been coding for over 15 years, and since I've been doing it as a career, I can't bring myself to work on very much outside of work like I used to. I have a github full of projects that I used to work on but when I'm home I want to do something that I enjoy. I don't think I've made a significant commit to any of my projects in over a year. Almost makes me want to go back to being an electrician so I can find renewed passion for what used to be my hobby.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#336

Post by dempedempe »

Learn something new. Learning new things is the only way to be happy. This is true on a neurophysiological level - the hippocampi of depressed people are shrunk. Happiness, positive emotions and learning and memory all take place in your hippocampus.

Learning and living are really the same thing. Both are just the formation of new synapses in your brain.

Practically speaking, change things up! Maybe find a new job, start a new personal project on something you've never worked on before. Take some time off if necessary and possible. But be sure to fill your time off with as many new experiences as possible.

Also, _passion is a skill_. Sometimes it comes naturally, but it can be cultivated, too. This is called the "growth mindset" (See Carol Dweck's book, "Mindset"). The growth mindset has been extensively studied over the past 3 decades, but only as it relates to intelligence. Now, psychologists are discovering that it applies to passion as well as intelligence[1].

So what does a growth mindset entail? You can only grow (in passion, intelligence, etc.) if you believe you can grow. So 1) believe that you can cultivate a passion in your career and 2) learn new things.

I had a pretty severe burnout 2 years ago. In my personal experience, the above is how I rediscovered a love for computers.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200306-the-surprising...

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#337

Post by vfinn »

will-in-wi wrote: post #327
vfinn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say write manageable programs. The uglier the codebase gets, the more I hate coding it. If the codebase is well-thought and easily extendable, coding is mostly fun and you get pleasure out of beautiful execution.

This got me thinking. I find that being repeatedly told not to clean up a system burns me out. To the extent that our programming is creative and enjoyable in its creativity, one must feel some sort of pride in the result in order to have any interest in its continuation. If you are being told to not clean things up or leave things in a messy state, you are left devoid of this sense of pride and joy in your work. Bes…

Yeah, this applies to any profession. People not only burnout because they have too much to do, but because of the stress of not being able to do their work well. It's a tough problem.
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