I no longer build software • Hacker News Board

Re: I no longer build software

#361

Post by nickthemagicman » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #284

cpursley wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your overall tone is negative and elitist. Thee $300 supermarket bike (I have one and put over 40 miles on it weekly and it's help up fine for four years) provides access to folks who otherwise can't afford the fancy $1,500 aluminium/carbon machines. Fancy bikes are still getting made and even getting better. Newly rich kid or VC funded startups distributes money from wealthy people to an every growing software indus…

The downvotes are fun. I guess some people are just against inclusiveness? I'm very grateful to be in this industry despite not having the "correct" background.

I don't get the downvotes.

You have a very solid extremely valid counter point and I think the person you're responding too created a false dichomtomy.

Cheaper does not eliminate the quality. They can both co-exist and indeed do.

The lower tier just opens the door for a group of people who never had access before.

Thank you for your input.

Re: I no longer build software

#362

Post by at_a_remove » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

senko wrote: post #179

leothekim wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building software was never simple or easy I think it’s gotten a whole lot simpler in the past 10 years. People used to have to rack their own hardware, install PDUs, check temperature gauges, plug wires, configure the switches, setup RAID and backups, make sure you have that serial cable plugged in so you can telnet in in case the switches don’t work, and lock the data center doors without forgetting their keys ba…

> People used to have to rack their own hardware, install PDUs, check temperature gauges, plug wires, configure the switches, setup RAID and backups, make sure you have that serial cable plugged in so you can telnet in in case the switches don’t work, and lock the data center doors without forgetting their keys back in the day. Yes, and other people did this job, not programmers. People that loved tinkering with hard…

Yes. Although I worn that and other hats before and often together, I disliked being a sysadmin. I don't like being on call, it causes me to wake up at two in the morning to check a website. I do not like worrying about when to install a new patch.

So when my job title switched away from programmer to some kind of DevOps thing and I was shoved back into the sys admin role, I was unhappy about it.

Re: I no longer build software

#363

Post by ed312 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

mauvehaus wrote: post #185

jamil7 wrote: post #2

The golden handcuffs are real, good on him for getting out.

I'm the OP on that github issue. Put it this way: I'm building furniture for money, but I can't claim to be making a living at it yet. I'm fortunate to have a supportive partner and that we've moved to somewhere with a lower cost of living than Boston. We ran through a budgeting exercise a couple of years ago before I made the career change, and besides housing, our single biggest expense is health insurance. I've al…

I'm also in the Boston area and seriously considered this! Would love to hear more about how you worked though health insurance, where to move, etc.

Re: I no longer build software

#364

Post by etblg » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

neya wrote: post #344

notacoward wrote: post #125

Totally on board with not building software any more. In fact, at 55 this is my last week of it. For real. Basically, everything sucks more about building software nowadays more than I remember it sucking before, from the mere mechanics of navigating through an obscenely large pseudo-object-oriented codebase to the WRONG constructs/idioms people use to build distributed systems to the way software is packaged and dep…

Wow, that resonates quite a lot with me, though I'm not 55 yet. I started my career as a software engineer with web development in the 90's. Everything seemed simpler. Literally. Then, fast forward to 2020. I'll cite you an example of what happened EXACTLY yesterday. I have a web application which is complete and ready to be deployed. It's a backoffice application for one of our e-commerce sites. It's built using Pho…

You may want to use `npm ci` instead of `npm install` on automated processes like CI. `npm ci` will install the package versions from `package-lock.json` that presumably worked while developing, `npm install` will try to install the latest that match the criteria in `package.json`

Re: I no longer build software

#365

Post by brentis » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

To build on an idea is infinitly more complex. The supposed need for cloud architectures to save money is a fairy tale to drive the need for kubernetes/etc. They make sense for large scale deployments but for my 20k subscribers I long for a rack and a few servers vs. 20 instances and increasing monthly costs.

Re: I no longer build software

#366

Post by jlangenauer » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #292

jlangenauer wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are right to say that the methods are vastly improved, but the ends to which those methods are applied have become ever more uninteresting (for a lot of people), and often morally suspect. We have built exquisite tools, but we use them to extract profit, to manipulate behaviour and often for no discernable purpose at all. Programming has become joyless. There are ever-shrinking spaces where a developer ge…

No, programming became useful for the mainstream. I program ever since you had to restrict arrays to 64k in Pascal's 286 real mode. It was definitely fun, but other than building really limited games and freaking text areas (that would regularly crash with out of memory errors, losing your changes), along with bad accounting software build in MS Fox, there wasn't much you could do. And I remember people literally lea…

I may be privileged, but I am neither young nor overpaid. I started programming on something called the Commodore 64, so my opinions have been refined over decades. And if I say programming has become joyless, it's because I've been around long enough to remember when it wasn't.

Re: I no longer build software

#367

Post by tarsinge » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #202

notacoward wrote: post #125

Totally on board with not building software any more. In fact, at 55 this is my last week of it. For real. Basically, everything sucks more about building software nowadays more than I remember it sucking before, from the mere mechanics of navigating through an obscenely large pseudo-object-oriented codebase to the WRONG constructs/idioms people use to build distributed systems to the way software is packaged and dep…

I believe the main thing that changed is that 10 years ago, "building software" meant you would work with (presumably reasonable) engineers. Nowadays, it means you do web busywork for some newly rich kid chasing a startup lifestyle, who may or may not have any idea about what's easy/difficult possible/impossible. Also, the whole industry has been strongly commercialized. Before, people would share source code on the…

It was always like this except in the hobbyist world, and I think maybe you and some developers are confused because the corporate takeover of the web is relatively recent. When I think of software development in the past I think of Office Space (the movie), not some idyllic times.

Re: I no longer build software

#368

Post by Gehinnn » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

jlangenauer wrote: post #278

matthewmacleod wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes without saying that your feelings are personal ones, totally valid, and nobody can really question them. I'm 20 years behind you, and I don't know what effect that will have on my views. But I don't really recognise the picture you're painting. Compared to the first steps I took as a developer about 15 years ago, almost everything about software development seems better to me. I find developing software to be…

I think you are right to say that the methods are vastly improved, but the ends to which those methods are applied have become ever more uninteresting (for a lot of people), and often morally suspect. We have built exquisite tools, but we use them to extract profit, to manipulate behaviour and often for no discernable purpose at all. Programming has become joyless. There are ever-shrinking spaces where a developer ge…

I had a great amount of fun working on my debug visualizer extension for vscode that was trending on hn a couple of weeks ago. And on other open source extensions and projects. I felt visionary and proud. That is what I want to do.

But it pays for nothing. I make more money as a street musician than with my open source projects that have more than 100k users. But I got paid a lot for improving some online gambling site. This is how it is.

Re: I no longer build software

#369

Post by dpcan » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #75

Add me to the woodworking ex-developers. I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands. I am finishing my first piece of furniture today. It's pretty scary to work without an undo button. The physical world isn't just instructions, but movements. A little twitch can ruin a cut. A clumsy movement can dent a piece of wood you spent an hour sanding. You truly experience the meaning of "…

"I built a website that pays the bills, and now I have a lot of time on my hands."

Okay.... I assume you're not going to talk about this because then you'll have so much competition you won't be able to pay the bills anymore, but do you have any generalized background information about this?

Re: I no longer build software

#370

Post by ifend » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #63

jb1991 wrote: 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.

Agree 100%.