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Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

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Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#91

Post by bzzzt »

The_Colonel wrote: post #80
kumarvvr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small question. Is PHP still a preferred platform for any sort of complex web development? I have never even looked at the php site or docs, but I am curious. In this day and age, is there a subset of Apps that PHP is suited for?

Traditional (non-SPA) web apps is where PHP is quite strong. Also depends on the team, if you have a PHP team and it's a web project, you probably want to use PHP.

That's the problem right? Nobody starts new non-SPA web app projects anymore.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#92

Post by devnullbyte »

sanderjd wrote: post #72
noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

I don't have experience with this yet, but being in my mid 30s now, I worry about it of course. But (again granting that I don't have your experience with this) what it looks like to me out there is that there seem to be fewer jobs that make sense for me at smaller more speculative companies, unless it's a CTO type role, but I see "senior" roles at large established companies that are more attractive anyway. (The pro…

Just keep learning and don't go stale and stay associated with tech that is going redundant. This is what I have always done and its done me well. I am 48 now and having a blast in my career hacking away on exciting projects.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#93

Post by The_Colonel »

Filligree wrote: post #31
vsareto wrote: post #17

>One great example of this is the debacle of the Amazon internal wiki migration. Back in 2015, the Amazon InfoSec team banned PHP at the company. Oof. To be fair, Java is probably way easier to code review.

Much depends on the Java. Having spent a lot of time on personal projects using the language, it doesn't deserve its reputation -- Java may 'require' an IDE to avoid spending too much time on boilerplate, but modern Java is a good language and the programming experience once you do have that IDE is one of the best, most effective I know. At the same time, it's absolutely possible for codebases to become "enterprisey"…

People really, really overrate the importance of a language. Java as a language is quite decent, but definitely not great.

What makes it great is everything around it - from second to none JVM, range of state-of-the-art developer tools to the best library ecosystem.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#94

Post by ken »

> most – say, 90%, of what I learn at one job is completely useless for the next one

This is the most surprising claim, to me. I would have flipped the ratios. Even the most radically different jobs I've had shared more than 10%.

90% of the facts that my boss tells me are useless for the next job, true, but 90% of what I learn are not the facts which are told to me.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#95

Post by ScottFree »

ptero wrote: post #64
noad wrote: post #21

I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip. Then I hit 30. That type of talk stopped. Then I hit 40. Now I will not be considered for any entry level, mid level, or senior level software dev job anywhere in the United States, despite being very desperate and willing to relocate for anything. Doesn't matter. Too old. I'm suppose…

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Sounding desperate.

Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#96

Post by munchbunny »

kumarvvr wrote: post #63
deweller wrote: post #44

> PHP is banned at Amazon due to security reasons, but its successor, Hack, runs a lot of.. Just to be clear, Hack is not PHP's successor. Hack is a fork of PHP developed by Facebook. Hack will not overtake PHP any time soon. PHP has had security issues in the past. Sure you can do stupid things with it if you want, but modern PHP is security conscious out of the box. Frameworks like Laravel make great default choice…

A small question. Is PHP still a preferred platform for any sort of complex web development? I have never even looked at the php site or docs, but I am curious. In this day and age, is there a subset of Apps that PHP is suited for?

In general it's not. That said, when you're picking a language/platform, you should start from questions like: "what are the hard problems?", "what are the lowest effort/most sustainable tools for dealing with those problems?", and "what are the tools that the developers have experience using?"

If your whole team are PHP or Rails veterans and you need to get a complex app off the ground fast, now might not be the best time to switch to Python or JavaScript for the server.

As an example, there's a huge ecosystem for Wordpress (PHP), and if it's not a tech company, piggybacking on Wordpress rather than spinning up a new Node.js based stack might be the most long term maintainable choice.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#98

Post by WJW »

theli0nheart wrote: post #39
stu2010 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's total all-in cost per dev is almost certainly >$300k per year, so more like >$7 million if that's an accurate number. As far as how it gets approved, that's not enough money to really register at Amazon's scale. I've seen waste similar to that at companies much, much smaller than Amazon that goes entirely un-noticed.

> As far as how it gets approved, that's not enough money to really register at Amazon's scale. I've seen waste similar to that at companies much, much smaller than Amazon that goes entirely un-noticed. Maybe I'm being dense, but this still doesn't register for me. If 4+ calendar years of work for a single team continues with no noticeable progress, then there's an organizational issue, no matter the size of the comp…

Of course there is, but that's not the point. Every large organisation has organisational issues and nobody in the history of humanity has found a way of preventing them yet. The only thing you can do when the group sizes get large is to try and keep the problem under control relative to how bad it is at other large companies.

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#99

Post by rfergie »

ScottFree wrote: post #95
ptero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Cho…

> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

It is a signal the the person isn't top talent. Because if they were they wouldn't be desperate

Re: Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

#100

Post by JackFr »

twic wrote: post #7
stefanchrobot wrote: post #4

Quite surprising take on the languages. > When to use Python or Ruby > Python and Ruby seem to me to be pretty similar in that they’re scripting languages and dynamically typed and seemed like the greatest thing in the 00’s. You use them when speed is more important than legibility or debugging. I'd say you pick them when productivity and time to market is important. I personally find dynamic languages far more legib…

> I personally find dynamic languages far more legible Maybe you're a 2xer though.

Me? I’m a fan of Blub.
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