I made this decision as well. https://gavinhoward.com/2020/08/the-software-industry-is-bro...
I no longer build software
191–200 of 891 posts
Re: I no longer build software
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a warning, you're eventually going to run out of places to put that furniture if you don't sell some of it! I'm the OP on that github issue, and while my partner and still have some IKEA furniture I'd like to replace, we also have a couple of pieces of mine that don't fit readily into our lives that we just have around the house. The chandelier on my website[0] was a spec piece built for a show at the Wharton Eshe…
The software developer turned woodworker keeps reading HN? :P
Yeah, it pretty reliably turns up interesting articles from the long tail (are the cool kids even still using that phrase?).
Re: I no longer build software
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't recall it being any better pre-2000. Frankly the tools really sucked back then. Build systems and IDEs were awful. Just go play with an autotools-based C project sometime to remind/education yourself. Visual Studio 7, horrible. No mainstream refactoring IDEs to speak of. C++ compilers across multiple platforms were horrible at standards compliance consistency, and you could barely get a working STL, practical…
> Just go play with an autotools-based C project sometime to remind/education yourself. Funny you should mention autotools. It reminds me a lot of webpack, especially in the way nobody[0] really understands how it works, but you search around for examples and copy/paste what works for you. [0] a hyperbole; i'm sure someone does, just as I'm sure some people dreamt of M4 macros back in the day
Oh it's so awful; but I recently was exposed to a project where some of the leads were trying to defend it as a reasonable tech choice. It really isn't. Not in this era. Most people never even used it correctly in the first place.
Re: I no longer build software
#194Amen. 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 don't recall it being any better pre-2000. Frankly the tools really sucked back then. Build systems and IDEs were awful. Just go play with an autotools-based C project sometime to remind/education yourself. Visual Studio 7, horrible. No mainstream refactoring IDEs to speak of. C++ compilers across multiple platforms were horrible at standards compliance consistency, and you could barely get a working STL, practical…
> autotools-based C project
It wasn't autotools per se that was horrible. It was the the fact that you had to pollute your system with random libraries, often no longer available from the operating system vendor repositories. Docker has been a lifesaver with these older projects.
Re: I no longer build software
#195Earlier 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?
Primary school a little of pottery and woodworking. Secondary school sewing and cooking. High school nothing.
Re: I no longer build software
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way. The plumbing required has become so complex these last few years (if you use new technology). 10 years ago we uploaded the server/backend binary to a VM, installed postgres/mysql and configured nginx/haproxy as a reverse proxy/ssl termination. Now, if you want to deploy a modern SPA while using some buzzwords like k8s and devops you need: * complex frontend build process with things like webpack…
The plethora of tools to make "devops" simpler and cheaper made it much more expensive. You cannot simplify something by adding overly complex layers of abstraction on top of it.
They make it cheaper at scale. Most of us don't need that scale, so for us it's expensive.
Re: I no longer build software
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I‘ve been programming for over 35 years now and have mostly avoided doing web stuff. It is quite possible.
how? SAP/ERP consulting?
Games, embedded, desktop apps, "infrastructure" software (OSes, networking, orchestration, developer tooling), mobile apps (depending on how picky you are about using APIs being "web"), ...
Re: I no longer build software
#198I'm a mechanical engineer in aerospace looking to move to software. I like the idea of setting up an office at home and working for myself. Is software really this bad, as all of the comments here suggest? Should I make the jump to software from a career in which I have a decade of experience? I just find aerospace boring, unimaginative, stressful and low paying, and if I could work on just building code for web apps…
I'm about 40 yrs old, started in software almost 25 years ago. I still really enjoy it. I stay away from web development because it's a big mess of sloppy languages and tools.
Re: I no longer build software
#199Holy shit, this is me! A couple things to clarify: I posted the original issue as a minor complaint about the docker cli and promptly forgot about it. I never expected it to get any traction or follow-up. At the time I posted it, I was working as a contractor for my former full time employer. I had left full-time work there in early 2017 to attend the full-time program at the (sadly now-defunct) Furniture Institute o…
Your Cabinet on Stand [1] is gorgeous.
1. https://www.flickr.com/photos/fuller_craft/49837847346/in/al...
Re: I no longer build software
#200It seems like nowadays you just can't make money building interesting things anymore. Most of the available programming work is really just writing glue code to make big software systems work as intended, to the point where it can feel more like writing configuration files than actual programming. Put simply, 98% of programming these days is scripting. On the other hand, you have lots of fun things one can do with co…
> Most of the available programming work is really just writing glue code to make big software systems work as intended, to the point where it can feel more like writing configuration files than actual programming. Put simply, 98% of programming these days is scripting.
It's that the entire purpose of programming, though? To abstract away the repetitive stuff? I personally see this as a good thing.
Even with all the configuration and scripting, there are still plenty of lower-level programming tasks involved in piecing together systems.
I'd rather save the difficult programming for the actual difficult tasks instead of re-implementing the already solved problems like CRUD.