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I no longer build software

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Re: I no longer build software

#61
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what is a great career pivot for someone that's been in development all their life? It seems that nothing pays as well as building software, unless you go into management which most developers would enjoy even less than digital plumbing.

The actual business analysis and requirements discovery? Meeting users, finding out about their problems and working out how software can solve them?

UX researcher? That doesn’t pay as well

Re: I no longer build software

#62
post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

> Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well.

Is this not a contradiction to you?

Re: I no longer build software

#63
post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

I think a lot of the pre-2000 programming was a bit more enjoyable because most of us were not programming for the web and actually using platforms that were designed for application development. The web is a very poor fit for what most people want designed.

Re: I no longer build software

#64

This is what Ive shifted to as well. Trades are much more useful in life, because you can't pay to get a job done right, and paying anyone else at all is far too expensive. For most people you have the reality of needing a 40 hour week job to live, and there's plenty of people who spent the 4 years to get a bachelor's in compsci and nobody cares to hire them. Software is volatile, you can spend plenty of time making…

I disagree. I really enjoy woodworking, but it's definitely not to save money. Same for working on motorcycles. The former is rendered useless by economies of scale, the latter by the cost of my garage and tools.

Re: I no longer build software

#65
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too would love to do it. It irks me to this day that I was taught nonsense such as latin in school instead of woodwork or metalwork.

Serious question, didn't anyone else' school have shop class? I was a college prep, NHS, cross country, all AP core courses kind of guy, and I took it all four years of high school. Or was there some kind of restriction on taking it at your school? Or maybe your parents didn't let you? Genuinely curious as to why someone with a professed interest would not have taken shop?

High school was 20 years ago for me and no shop classes.

Re: I no longer build software

#66
post #8

This made me laugh, because I actually am planning on making a transition to woodworking. My house is paid off, and I can live on a fairly small income that I can probably generate mostly from passive income. If I can actually supplement that with building furniture, bonus. If not, then I still get to build furniture.

Add me to the list of software developers who desires to switch to woodworking/machining.

How about robotics? It would allow you to combine mechanical engineering with CS.

Re: I no longer build software

#67
post #8

This made me laugh, because I actually am planning on making a transition to woodworking. My house is paid off, and I can live on a fairly small income that I can probably generate mostly from passive income. If I can actually supplement that with building furniture, bonus. If not, then I still get to build furniture.

I won't move away from my main job for a while, but I do want to move to a lifestyle where I grow all my own food. It's a very interesting problem, of whether a single person/family can be mostly self-sufficient on food while spending only a small part of their day growing the said food.

Lots of biology, perhaps a little bit of tech thrown in, if it helps.

Re: I no longer build software

#68
post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

> Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. Is this not a contradiction to you?

To me, no. A significant amount of the complexity that I generally deal with is “accidental complexity” caused by the current general approach of mixing up a ton of random dependencies of unknown quality or pedigree and the subtle flawed interactions between them. Coming up with ugly workarounds is creative I suppose, but ton in a sense that makes me at all happy.

Re: I no longer build software

#69
post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

> Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. Is this not a contradiction to you?

It's not a contradiction to me. Things can look like plumbing from the surface, require no creativity at all, and run some ML model below the surface that only a handful of mathematicians can understand. The upside: powerful tools that just need to plumb in place, the downside: god help you if it breaks.

Re: I no longer build software

#70
post #20

Amen. Modern software development is frankly kinda sucky. The old days pre-2000 were arguably a lot more enjoyable. Today it's just digital plumbing and dealing with all sorts of issues that are not creative. The sheer complexity is frankly absurd as well. I've thought about moving on from software many times, and I know many who have. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's best way to spend your short l…

I think a lot of the pre-2000 programming was a bit more enjoyable because most of us were not programming for the web and actually using platforms that were designed for application development. The web is a very poor fit for what most people want designed.

I‘ve been programming for over 35 years now and have mostly avoided doing web stuff. It is quite possible.
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