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I no longer build software

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Re: I no longer build software

#621

Post by nicbou »

devwastaken wrote: post #356
nicbou wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't pick up woodworking to build a house. If that was my goal, sticking to programming would be the fastest way to get a house built. My ability to make money from programming far exceeds my ability to save money by doing anything else. If it was about the money, I wouldn't rent a garage, fill it with tools and spend my weekends building subpar furniture for twice the cost (a common woodworking trope). I'd just…

Okay, good for you, as I said in my original post the job market for software is not generally that good, and the vast majority of people work low paying jobs.

This is why I used the first person, as in specifically me and not everyone.

Re: I no longer build software

#622

Post by gorbachev »

knute wrote: post #134
christophilus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just starting pre 2000, but it was not much better. I had to deal with a legacy COBOL system. I had to write C++. VB6 was actually pretty great for doing quick plumbing. And C# + WinForms which succeeded it was also great. But in the end, I’m still solving problems today, just like I was back then. I still enjoy programming as much or more than I did then. Some super tedious things have gotten substantially eas…

In the early 1990s and early 2000s web development was a nightmare. Having to test not just in different browsers, but different versions of different browsers, because they had substantially different behaviors. There was no "Inspect element", JavaScript debuggers were entirely absent or incredibly crude. Getting a decent looking web page to render and function correctly across all the different browsers you support…

It was, but it was also much, much simpler. You couldn't shoot yourself in the foot as easy as you can now.

Re: I no longer build software

#623

Post by kennu »

throwawaygh wrote: post #607
altdatathrow wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people around these parts who have arrived at the conclusion that the only way to build software today is using all those services and more (I mean, where's kubernetes in that stack?). They will aggressively defend their role which is no longer about creating software but instead entirely about weaving together a myriad of components.

Playing with legos is easier then delivering value.

Playing with legos is delivering value. Reinventing the same wheel over and over again is not.

Re: I no longer build software

#624

Post by ClikeX »

coldtea wrote: post #443
ClikeX wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that argument gets used any time new technology arrises. Sure it wasn't hard, doesn't mean you need to stop working on making it even simpler. > So we've mostly solved trivial non-problems if/not regressions? While I agree some developments have worsened the experience of particular things. What developments would you rather have seen? By the way. VR was already a thing in the 80's. It's hardly new, only improv…

> Yeah, that argument gets used any time new technology arrises. Sure it wasn't hard, doesn't mean you need to stop working on making it even simpler. Why not? Technology has opportunity costs. Usuless "easier" technology makes us slaves to it and to increased infrastructure. Opportunity costs, diminishing results -- all those are good questions to ask.

Considering the amounts of flights, I'd say that being able to book your travels without calling elimited the costs of needing phone operators. And allows me, as a user, to also easily book outside of office hours.

I agree that there's a lot of useless tech around. Especially in this startup world where it seems to be all "Uber but for x".

You also haven't answered my question. What would've been a non-useless tech that should've been developed on in the meanwhile?

And just because some commercial companie (travel agencies) spent their profits streaminglining their booking process doesn't mean it's all been useless these last 30 years.

Re: I no longer build software

#625

Post by spenczar5 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #553
jerf wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've never had a job convincing people to click ads either in about the same amount of time. But when I look at the salaries being paid by those companies trying to get people to click ads I think I must've made a mistake somewhere. Not that I want to have a job getting people to click ads, but those jobs pay like 2X to 3X the highest salary I've ever made (or more).

You haven't made a mistake. Those jobs pay highly because they have to. The phenomenon of soulless, not-great-for-the-world jobs being really highly paid is not a new one, and not at all unique to software - compare a celebrity plastic surgeon versus a doctor who saves lives after disasters, or a corporate attorney at a weapons company versus a pro bono lawyer who works for virtually nothing.

Re: I no longer build software

#626

Post by treis »

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.…

>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

They're not really though. Ads may be the revenue stream but it's not like the top engineers at Google were on ads. They were building the search engine.

Re: I no longer build software

#627

Post by grumple »

roel_v wrote: post #265
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.

Those videos show up in my Youtube feed the last few weeks too (although these saws have existed for many years now), but I still wonder - why do they always use hotdogs in the demo videos? Can't they find anyone who's willing to risk a finger, or is it something much more boring like OSHA rules or something?

There’s a video of the guy who makes them using his finger. There’s another on their website, search for sawstop. But as for others, tech can always fail so why risk it? Also it costs $100 each time you do it so it’s not like a ton of people want to waste the money.

Re: I no longer build software

#628

Post by ska »

orbifold wrote: post #565
aarongough wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The quote should be "The best minds that I know are thinking about how to make people click ads." There is a considerable number of exceedingly intelligent people in pure mathematics and (theoretical) physics that don't work for Google, Facebook etc. and never would. Those that do often have nothing to do with Ads even three to four edges removed (think Martinis or the people at MSR).

This is true, but don't overestimate it. I know first rate math & physics types who gave up on academic work and now work at a FAANG or similar; and I know second rate ones who stayed. So it's a mixed bag.

Re: I no longer build software

#629

Post by Igelau »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #237
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…

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…

We're all on the great curve of programmer productivity through the ages. All we can see are the local maximums and minimums we've encountered.

From my journey on the chart, things have only gotten better since the time I crashed a C++ compiler just because I was using std::map.

Re: I no longer build software

#630

Post by smolder »

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…

Let me work with your analogy a bit. What if your dad's job was to install sound systems designed around poor quality speaker components, using expensive DSP systems that add a lot of latency to the signal and draw lots of power?

He knows he could build better components than the ones he uses if he put the time in, and create a better overall system design with a better price/performance by applying state of the art knowledge, but people prefer to pay him to combine commodity parts of questionable design in the standard, proven, but clearly suboptimal way.

Now where is his job satisfaction?

If you really wanted to stretch the analogy, maybe imagine the expensive DSPs he is expected to install all forward a record of any audio played on them to a shadowy government agency.

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