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I no longer build software

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461–470 of 891 posts

Re: I no longer build software

#461

Post by bobbyz »

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…

A younger developer might think the tools that suck. A younger developer might think that the older developer's reluctance to embrace change or recall the time when they were beginners is part of the reason why they suck. Like git. Git sucks.

Re: I no longer build software

#462

Post by marcinzm »

jdmoreira wrote: post #445
christiansakai wrote: post #310

The grass is always greener on the other side. Let's see. I have 3 degrees in unrelated field (Industrial Eng, Theology, and CompSci), and worked in on a few careers, white collar jobs like being a sales engineer at a biodiesel company, helping running a cafe for a family business, being a church administrator before the current software engineering. I also worked on low paid labor jobs such as laundry, dry cleaning,…

wait... your software engineering job is stress free? That surprises me.

As I see it, it's mainly a question of what you look for when interviewing. If you look for money then you'll likely get more stress. If you look for calm then you'll likely get less stress. You'll also get less money but nothing in life give you everything. I've turned down multiple offers when it was visible they valued workaholism or had bad processes.

Re: I no longer build software

#463

Post by ativzzz »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #329
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…

There are ever-shrinking spaces where a developer gets to build something novel I think it might be possible to say that relative to the entire industry the space for novel or interesting work is shrinking – possibly. But I don't think that actually means there's less interesting stuff to work on. If anything, the spaces for that are growing – maybe more routine work is growing faster, but I can't really say. I'd wag…

I agree. Though because of the growth of the industry, these spots where actual cutting edge work is happening are insanely competitive, and I would bet that many of the programmers (not all of course) who worked on the cool stuff 20 years ago would not make the cut for the cutting edge today, or are simply not interested in the particular niche of that edge.

Re: I no longer build software

#464

Post by vbezhenar »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #254
cpursley wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> the already solved problems If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the phrase " XXX is a solved problem," indicating that there's a dependency that "solves" it, I'd be rich. People think that, just because we can google up a dependency that does what we want (sorta/kinda/mostly), the "problem is solved." It's been my experience, that, when our "solution" is to bring in a massive dependency to address a very ba…

You don't need couple of months to implement SOAP, unless you want to make a framework. SOAP is just an XML passed via HTTP. You can build everything from the ground up in a matter of few days. And if you can re-use any HTTP library and XML parser, it's a matter of few hours.

May be there's some layer above SOAP which requires more implementation. I have no idea about OVNIF. But SOAP itself is pretty simple. Basically you're firing SoapUI, figuring out protocol details and write code to deal with that particular XML-based format.

Re: I no longer build software

#465

Post by friendlybus »

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…

The joyless is across the west culturally. It'll take 20 years to build up again.

Re: I no longer build software

#466

Post by pdimitar »

vbezhenar wrote: post #441
blueterminal wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to worry about many many trivial things I had to worry about before these tools, and now I can actually work on the problem I'm trying to solve almost immediately.

For some people solving business problems is boring. But tinkering with those things that you're calling trivial is what brings joy.

You and me both.

Re: I no longer build software

#467

Post by CptFribble »

coldtea wrote: post #442
tombert wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an awfully reductionist take, and is demonstrably wrong. > to actually meet friends and not in VR space Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in the 90s, a (somewhat unsuccessful) attempt at a semi-VR thing; they were (and are) a pretty big business, and I don't think that they were just doing it because they thought it was cool; there was demand for something like virtual reality at the time. > People li…

> This is also wrong; anecdata, but at least one person (my dad) hated having to call up travel agencies in the 90s to book a plane ticket. Yeah, and I hate scratching my head when itchy. Doesn't mean an "automatic head stratcher" is the best use of our innovation, or adds anything significant to humanity...

innovation doesn't always look like a steam engine or a polio vaccine, with immediate and obvious impact on society.

sometimes innovation looks like 1000 small improvements that only save us 30 seconds of our day, but once they're all built we suddenly have whole hours freed up that used to be taken up by things like spending an hour on the phone with a travel agent

Re: I no longer build software

#468

Post by ativzzz »

sdevonoes wrote: post #446
blueterminal wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to worry about many many trivial things I had to worry about before these tools, and now I can actually work on the problem I'm trying to solve almost immediately.

Is that true tho? I mean, I love programming, but I hate React. I love thinking about data structures and their relationships, but I don't like Docker. I spent hours thinking about how can I solve a problem (just for fun) and I absolutely don't need GCP nor Azure. I like coming up with cool algorithms (or reading about them) but I find Laravel (or Django) really unelegant and not worth my time.

It depends on the problem you're solving of course. All of these tools are built to be able to solve larger, more complex problems more effectively. You are still welcome to ignore all of them and write a cool program for yourself for fun, just don't expect to get paid for it.

Ultimately, we get paid to solve business problems, not to have fun with programming.

Re: I no longer build software

#469

Post by fraktl »

christiansakai wrote: post #310

The grass is always greener on the other side. Let's see. I have 3 degrees in unrelated field (Industrial Eng, Theology, and CompSci), and worked in on a few careers, white collar jobs like being a sales engineer at a biodiesel company, helping running a cafe for a family business, being a church administrator before the current software engineering. I also worked on low paid labor jobs such as laundry, dry cleaning,…

Software development is not your calling, it's just another job for you. A very good job, but still: just a job. I'm not critcizing you, just stating how I understood what you wrote.

Difference between something that's your calling (music, judging by what you wrote) and a job is that you don't invest emotion into the job.

When you invest emotion into what you do, when your craft is sacred to you - then you experience disappointment when you see other people in the field not caring as much as you do.

When you follow the industry and the trends and when you understand that most of what you get to read is fake - a huge pile of disappointment creeps up. I'm in the same boat as the OP, and oddly enough - I'm preparing for the same line of work - woodworking :)

Honestly, I can't wait to leave this world of software development where most of what's available is fashion or just pure bullshit sprinkled with lies, but I have to pay the bills and mortgage so I can't afford to leave right now.

It's not about grass being greener on the other side, it's about not having to put up with other people who are often dead wrong and completely impervious to any kind of reasoning. Leaving software development business does not necessarily mean one stops writing software. I can't see myself stopping writing code or thinking in code when I finally leave IT, but I can't wait when I get to stop to absorb fake content from linkedin and when I don't have to read emails that are 99% white noise and 1% useful information.

Re: I no longer build software

#470

Post by ecpottinger »

jlangenauer wrote: post #366
bad_user wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My solution was to dump the Windows environment for my personal use.

I program in Arduino where I only have 2.5 K for my variables, programming with so little memory really forces you to think about your program methods.

I built small projects using 74LSxxx chips, building logic instead of programming it can be refreshing.

When I need more space I program in C++ on a Haiku machine, 32 GB of ram and 12 CPUs gives you the power, but the lack of frameworks means it is all your own coding.

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