431–440 of 891 posts
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> passive income Just curious: is this income 100% passive?
There’s no such thing, there’s just varying degrees of risk vs leverage.
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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.
My guess is that it has nothing to do with pre-2000 (or non-web), it's just that people enjoy a rote activity a lot more at the start of their careers when things are still new and interesting. When you've done 50 web sites, the 51st isn't nearly as exciting as the first ten. I got burned out badly by a string of gigs that effectively came down to helping clients fight some self-inflicted business complexity and conn…
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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…
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…
If you don't like rich kids, don't work for them.
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You must be in your twenties. Software development can be a uniquely depressing kind of work. All the complexity, which can be compensated for with youthful vigor, can eventually become so overwhelming and exhausting that you will need a break. Money isn't everything. If you can do a job that pays less but doesn't depress you as much, you probably should go for it. You won't keep your job as a developer forever anywa…
>Money isn't everything At the top of the requirements list of any job, is How Well It Pays. Having comfortable amount of money frees you to to enjoy other aspects of life/personal passion/family building. That's how the global economy works, for the time being. For a job that doesn't require overtime, consistent schedule, a solid 9-5 type position. What is there to complain? Looking at the big picture, the economy i…
If "I no longer build software" doesn't resonate with you, you just haven't "been there". Again, you're probably in your twenties. Don't expect your rationalizations to last you into your forties.
If you're still a developer at the end of your forties, chances are you will lose your job and your spouse anyway.
> That's how the global economy works, for the time being.
Curiously, people in the less affluent countries report being happier. Also, in the US, most of the money you earn goes into someone else's rent: Your lease or mortgage, your car, your insurance, your loans, your taxes, and so on. It's the American Dream!
> Looking at the big picture, the economy is filled with people who are barely getting by, laid off due to pandemic, and working overtime or multiple jobs, to generate enough income in attempt to sustain life.
If you think those are your two options, that's fine. I'm not telling you to quit your job.
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All this, yet the world is unquestionably getting worse. Crazy times.
I'm not entirely sure the world is getting worse, but I am certain that it's becoming more complex. And when the finite cognitive capacity of every human being must manage that complexity just to survive (let along propser), it sure feels like it's getting worse.
Seriously building software has not gotten any easier. Communication and attention has slipped and I think these two issues make development all the more challenging.
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All this, yet the world is unquestionably getting worse. Crazy times.
Except it's not. Books like Factfulness show it quite clearly. We have our fair share of problems but quality of life has been steadily improving almost everywhere and almost exponentially in some areas.
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…
After having read the article Built to Last [1] from the latest issue of Logic Magazine over my morning coffee, and spending breakfast pondering my coming day of figuring out if we can disentangle some stuff I'm working on from the increasingly complex and inscrutable Big Data ecosystem, and if it's even going to be possible to get management to approve it when the requests to stick RSS feeds into DBMSes are forever…
Last year I wrote a small book called "Splash of Code", which teaches newcomers to code (in JavaScript) in a way that similar to the way I learned 30 years ago. I selected JavaScript because the barrier to entry is low, you just need a browser. Many programming ecosystems are daunting to setup these days but there are still some easy systems we can use to introduce newcomers without all the modern complexity.
Browsers have come a very long way in the last 10 years and are a pretty amazing platform for development. Once you learn a little bit you can start to write amazing software for a cross-platform worldwide audience.
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Good for you. No, really. I wish you nothing but the best. But that's now . After some years, when you have already secured a relatively decent life, your perspective on the value of continuing to do it might change. In fact, it would be rather amazing if it didn't. Yes, it's absolutely a privileged position, but it's still how I feel and how I suspect a lot of programmers my age feel. You can't dismiss our reality a…
I don't think you can secure a decent life by programming outside of US - if this is understood as position of comfortable financial independence. I'm a programmer, my income is in the top 10th percentile, but that just means I'm in the upper middle class with the privilege to pay more taxes. I need to work until I get to retirement to secure myself financially.