Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I no longer build software

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 891 posts

Re: I no longer build software

#541

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

vbezhenar wrote: post #464
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Basicall…

Thanks for that. I based my estimate, looking at the code for SOAPEngine[0], which is the library I use. It's pretty complete, and that guy knows his stuff.

I tend to be fairly anal about testing; especially low-level stuff. It can be a bit excruciating, working with me, as I insist on pounding away at everything. That's why it's taken a week and a half to get to the place I'm at now. I'm working on the login and initial user edit stuff. Basic (but critical) stuff, and I keep encountering edge cases. I'm also debugging the backend SDK.

[0] https://github.com/priore/SOAPEngine

Re: I no longer build software

#542

Post by Sevii »

chpmrc wrote: post #208
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #168

It 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…

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…

Yes, you can get paid to build interesting things. But the work you will be doing is not going to be interesting. Working as part of a team with the 1000s of engineers on Uber or Office or Alexa is going to be tedious no matter how valuable you think the product is.

Re: I no longer build software

#543

Post by marcinzm »

christiansakai wrote: post #478
marcinzm wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. I am paid pretty well at my company right now, but there are always my colleague that I know get a higher offer for some other role. I can choose to get salty about it or just try to transition with that role but with less satisfaction and more learning. There are more to life than just chasing money. No matter who you are, peasants or kings, you are only given a limited time to live. We trade 40 hrs of our lif…

Yeah. You don't need to make bad money if you want a lack of stress but generally the difference between good money and great money is going to be a lot of stress.

Re: I no longer build software

#544

Post by lallysingh »

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'm not far behind you in age, but I started crazy early in life.

Well, I think the big question is, are you /developing/ or /hacking/? Hacking is fun, developing is a job. Hacking is in a language and stack that's probably a bit unstable, that most shops wouldn't let you use in production. Developing is writing code at about 30% of your ability to express yourself, to avoid someone half-reading your code later from misinterpreting it.

Sometimes you can intermix the two to make the job better. Sometimes not.

Re: I no longer build software

#545

Post by [deleted] »

jnwatson wrote: post #70
protomyth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I‘ve been programming for over 35 years now and have mostly avoided doing web stuff. It is quite possible.

[deleted]

Re: I no longer build software

#546

Post by analog31 »

anticristi wrote: post #400
analog31 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could just be an outgrowth of complexity. As the number of pieces increases by O(n), the number of relationships between pieces goes as O(n^2). As a result, any endeavor is going to tend towards the majority of people working on connecting pieces. This is true in plenty of occupations. I've seen it in mechanical and electrical design, for instance. With that said, I know a lot of good people who actually enjoy t…

Very nicely put. I mean look at a car: It's essentially a lot of 3rd party components put together coherently. I don't think any part of my Peugeot has a Peugeot label on it, rather Bosch, Autoliv, Michelin, etc. Same thing with airplanes. Boeing is pretty much Honeywell+GE+Liebherr to name a few. I am unsure why people find componentizing and integrating unrewarding in IT. I didn't hear my dad (a sound engineer) com…

One issue I've seen is that a person who devotes 100% of their time to integration can lose their quantitative engineering skill -- it's a "use it or lose it" phenomenon. The folks who manage to cling to that work end up becoming the only ones who can do it, resulting in a sort of caste system with no relation to actual productivity.

However, in my experience, the best integrators are worth their weight in gold. It requires a mental organization, patience, and discipline that I don't possess. The ones who do it badly are the ones who are racking up dependencies and technical debt.

Re: I no longer build software

#547

Post by yetihehe »

wmeredith wrote: post #215
snazz wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally off-topic, but the automatic blade brakes on modern table saws are really cool. It runs a current through the blade, so when something moist like your finger or a hot dog gets too close (maybe using capacitance?), it automatically drops the blade and instantly stops it with a single-use brake mechanism. Better to destroy the $100 blade-and-brake assembly than to lose a finger.

These saw brake systems aren’t on “modern table saws”. This system is branded and patented and only exists on Saw Stop table saws (no affiliation). If I recall correctly, the inventor took the tech to the big saw makers when it was first in invented and was turned away, because of some combination of he wanted too much money and they didn’t want the liability of marketing a “safe” table saw. So he started his own com…

> You’re out ~$150 if you trigger it. Small price to pay for keeping a finger.

You can also trigger it if your wood is too wet. That was one of reasons given against using it everywhere.

Re: I no longer build software

#548

Post by microtherion »

vmception wrote: post #427
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…

check out crypto, especially the “defi” space building there is a creative process and it pays better than big tech The onchain codebases arent that big because they cant be.

I can't judge whether the actual programming there is fun, but I can't imagine an environment where bugs get exploited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars can be all that fun, and the entire field seems to be built on fraud, scams, and finding greater fools.

I suspect a nontrivial number of programmers in that field will find themselves making license plates or exploring harbors with concrete shoes a few years from now.

Re: I no longer build software

#549

Post by mattmanser »

genidoi wrote: post #405
lmarcos wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here it lays the paradox. All the tools you have mentioned have little to do with programming (one individual solving problems by writing code). The tools you mentioned have to do with software engineering (a bunch of individuals solving problems by writing code, plus a bunch of constraints). The joy is in programming, not in software engineering. At least that's how I interprete the GitHub comment (and all these…

I think it's easy to forget that modern tooling (+AWS/GCP/Azure) let's one dev match or exceed the productivity of 15 developers and a couple of PMs in 2005.

It's a laughable claim to say one developer has replaced 15, and obviously not true. The vast majority of code was business logic and still is.

Today's 'process' is no more efficient than, say, deploying rails to heroku in 2007. And even before that, you'd spend half a day writing an automatic deployment script, and then deployments would take a couple of clicks and you'd never think about it again.

Re: I no longer build software

#550

Post by grishka »

alexpetralia wrote: post #535
grishka wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only 27 but I'm already dissatisfied a lot with most of what the software industry does and the decisions it makes. I've been 1.5 years without a job at this point and wherever I look for one I'm very disappointed. - The arbitrary deadlines that serve no purpose. Example: we have to update our app every week/month because reasons . - The utter lack of understanding of the concept of feature completeness. Example:…

To me, this sounds like developers who are too far away from the business. Either they don't understand the context, or they aren't given the latitude to express their concerns about product direction.

IMO "the business" is the root of the problem. Businesses tend to put money before literally everything else, and thus we end up with the awfulness that is the modern social media for example.

No matter how visionary, proficient, and user-respecting you are as a developer, if you aren't complicit in earning all the money in the world at all costs, you're gonna get replaced by someone else who is.

Post reply on HN