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I no longer build software

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Re: I no longer build software

#521

Post by rbreve »

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…

How I miss the old days simplicity. One php File you just uploaded with ftp and that was the deployment. Now you need to know so many frameworks and processes to deploy a simple web app. It’s overwhelming and I get anxious because It’s so hard to choose what to learn.

Re: I no longer build software

#522

Post by zacharyvoase »

what is the deal with the software engineering -> woodworking pipeline? is it that programmers get so fed up of working with abstract concepts that they immediately pendulum-swing to the most concrete form of building (that can still be done by only one person) that they can find?

Re: I no longer build software

#523

Post by C1sc0cat »

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…

That does depend in some areas of technical /systems programming back then you normally developers where expected to know the basics and be able to do all that - the original full stack developer OSI 1-7.

Trouble is they tended to be interesting but poorly paid jobs

Re: I no longer build software

#524

Post by ptyyy »

burger_moon wrote: post #412
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 went the other way into programming from the trades. Sometimes, especially when I read about people leaving this industry to go work in the trades it makes me nostalgic and miss working with my hands and building real things. But I also have enough bad memories of shitty work conditions and waking up sore day after day to give me a gut check to stay put for a little longer. > I don't think programming is the probke…

Yeah I did the same. I went from being an avionics/aviation electrician to college and then to being a software engineer. I hated being in the elements all the time so I wanted to have an officer job. Overall it's been good for me but I do miss working with my hands more.

> Turning my hobbies in jobs killed off a lot of fun I used to have.

Yep. I haven't really worked on any of my hobby projects like I had before.

Re: I no longer build software

#525

Post by aogaili »

user5994461 wrote: post #263
kossTKR wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so it seems most people here on HN hates their jobs? That's sad but i think its not unique. Web dev was especially insane during the IE era, more than today. Most people just hate their jobs, it's nothing unique to the tech sector and i would argue that tech is still a pretty comfortable niche to work in compared to most other fields. Doctors have extreme debt and work crazy hours, teachers get way too little, m…

Doctors have guaranteed work and income (the debt is only true in the US), they can walk into any hospital to get a job or open their own office, their status is protected and the job cannot be outsourced abroad. Have a look at what doctors make and what engineers make, the H1B salary data is a good sample, you will see that engineers are very pale in comparison. Teachers have guaranteed job, good income and many ben…

Well, the grass doesn't seem to be much greener elsewhere, and it seems most of folks here are confusing hobbies (things you do at your own pace for fun) with work (things you've to do for others, at their own terms, for money/material stuff).

If you google "being doctor sucks", you will find very similar complaints (see link below), and it seems some doctors were envious of nurses, but I didn't bother googling "being a nurse sucks" because I know what to expect.

https://www.google.com/search?q=being+doctor+sucks&oq=being+...

and here is another one about being carpenter sucks http://www.bbcboards.net/showthread.php?t=828471

and this one is about how hard is it make money from woodworking https://thewoodwhisperer.com/articles/why-i-dont-offer-woodw...

here is an interesting take away from that last thread:

"I have built maybe 6 pieces I really liked in the past 10yrs. Thats someting you’ll face in any craft business. Making crap you don’t like."

Well, welcome to modern capitalism, adulthood and work. The underlying assumption here is life supposed to be fun and easy, it is not, it has never been and perhaps it will never be.

Re: I no longer build software

#526

Post by C1sc0cat »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #515
fsloth wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW I think that's the same in the US as well, unless you strike it lucky with stock options. As obscene as Silicon Valley salaries are, it would take remarkable financial discipline to get to the point where an early retirement could be had. I believe that due to market forces, engineering salaries are set as high as they can be without producing "escape velocity" for said engineers. That said, I'm not in the US pr…

Id agree but can we stop using "obscene" in this way and TBH a average SV salary is nothing much to write home about compared to some other professions.

Re: I no longer build software

#527

Post by vikramkr »

nescioquid wrote: post #497
chpmrc wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can order a comfy car anywhere I am with the tap of a button. I can order food from hundreds of restaurants and have it delivered in less than 30 mins with the tap of a button. I can book flights and hotels with the tap of a button. I can play with friends in virtual reality and actually sweat. I can watch a live stream of SpaceX launching reusable rockets in space. I could buy a car that is almost fully "self driv…

Reading this litany of technologically-enabled consumer achievements, I thought of David Graeber who visited the disappointment we sometimes feel for how things actually went from mid-century to now. "[...]Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any c…

I think its nonsensical to condemn the rate of progress because we didn't achieve a vision of science fantasy grounded in what people thought in the 1950s. A lot of those ideas are "thing that exists, but more magic." We have helicopters, but it turns out zoom calls work just as good to meet people, without the air traffic control nightmare. We have the internet at our fingers, an advance so monumental that its nearly impossible to imagine life before this. Teleportation and antigravity - I mean - at a point- thats just plain magic. I will grant the space stuff though, we should have been way further along there. But this willfully ignores the mind bending amount of technological progress that we've made in the most rapidly technologically changing period in human history in computation, biotech, nanotechnology, etc etc just because we didn't achieve some of the magic that soft sci-fi or science fantasy writers envisioned.

Re: I no longer build software

#528

Post by doctoboggan »

rbreve wrote: post #521
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…

How I miss the old days simplicity. One php File you just uploaded with ftp and that was the deployment. Now you need to know so many frameworks and processes to deploy a simple web app. It’s overwhelming and I get anxious because It’s so hard to choose what to learn.

My current project is one file with html,css,js all in one. I am using Vue, stripe, and three.js. To deploy I git push and then render handles all the rest (including provisioning a free certificate).

Honestly it’s easier now to do things like that than 15 years ago when I first started.

Re: I no longer build software

#529

Post by etripe »

bobbyz wrote: post #461
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.

If you think git sucks, which VCS sucks less? I've only tried TFS and SVN myself, but I find git the best option among them.

Re: I no longer build software

#530

Post by jerf »

aarongough wrote: post #460
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…

Unfortunately I agree with this. A great quote I saw a while ago: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” –Jeff Hammerbacher Every paying software job I've ever had was in some way involved getting people to click on ads. Either directly making a product where ad click rate is a measured metric, or products that helped people make products where clicking on ads was a metric.…

Have you tried... looking for one that isn't?

I've been in the biz for coming up on 25 years and I've never tried to make anyone click on an ad.

It also may help to downgrade "doing genuine good" from "solving the world's biggest problem once and for all" to "helping people get food reliably" or "keeping this industrial process that provides value to thousands of people going" and so on. Sometimes I do lose a bit of track of what I'm doing, but in the end the jobs I've worked still end up helping people do useful things, or protecting people, not making them click on ads.

There's a lot of jobs in programming that don't involve making them click on ads. Even in the heart of Silicon Valley, there's going to be a lot of jobs that don't boil down to that.

But you may have to, you know, change jobs.

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