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I no longer build software

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631–640 of 891 posts

Re: I no longer build software

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Having a "comfortable amount" of money means nothing if you're burned out to the point where you can not enjoy the rest of your life. 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 jo…

Huh? What does the spouse have to do with things?

Re: I no longer build software

#632

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…

What are you moving on to ? And can I come along (52) ?

Re: I no longer build software

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pivoted tomorrow sales engineering for 8 years, then a technical BD role, then back to SW engineering. You get to talk worth a bunch of people in sales and still exercise your problem solving skills.

Sales engineering is a great place for being able to tinker, interact with a wide range of clients/prospects, and plus being a revenue center...

How does one break into this? I've tried getting into the sales side of things, but it seems to elude me.

Re: I no longer build software

#634

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So we've mostly solved trivial non-problems if/not regressions? People lived in 1990 and didn't feel that bad to have to call a travel agency to get a ticket, or, god forbid, to actually meet friends and not in VR space... I'll give you "self driving cars" -- well, I would if they could work today, which they don't...

Anyone remember spending hours at AAA getting TripTiks and a highlighted route on a vague map for a (now) simple road trip? And the ensuing argument about the passenger's navigation obligations when you inevitably miss an exit halfway into the trip? And spending significant time preparing the (unreliable 80s domestic) car for a road trip? I recently did a ~1000 mile trip that I used to do as a kid in the 90s. Back th…

Even the improvements over the last 15 years have been immense. Remember using printed directions from Mapquest?

Re: I no longer build software

#635
post #564
post #342

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The thing nobody likes to mention in casual conversation about the benefits of VR, is that there’s a whole industry working on VR sex simulation games, with big FOSS extension ecosystems, control of modern sex toys through open-standard teledildonics APIs, etc. There’s Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 levels of effort and detail put into these. (And the further thing that nobody likes to mention in casual conversation…

> have an addiction to visiting prostitutes, that can be as costly as a drug habit; and that a good VR rig, coupled with this extensible, customizable VR sex-sim software, can manage—much more-so than regular porn—to mostly sate the same psychological needs that made them retain the services of escorts in the first place Two thoughts: 1- Are men really replacing flesh & bone prostitutes with VR sex sims? 2- Is this r…

> Are men really replacing flesh & bone prostitutes with VR sex sims?

Considering people are already buying Realdolls. I don't doubt it.

> Is this really a "good" development?

Maybe in some niche cases. But I'd say it wouldn't be good considering how damaging porn/sex addiction can be.

Re: I no longer build software

#636
post #127

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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.

> The web is a very poor fit for what most people want designed. The web is an application development platform that's split into two pieces with a critical security boundary in the middle, which causes basically all of its problems because every web app has to be a distributed system. If you can constrain what you want to build to either a set of pages and forms or a single client-server app that sits in a sandbox a…

^On the other hand, the alternative is worse: a proprietary platform which shifts unpredictably and from which the owner can ban you.

Linux might "shifts unpredictably" too (looking at you Gnome ;) but at least the owner can't ban you.

Re: I no longer build software

#637

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.

Application development on the web is much more pleasant than what we were doing on any pre-web platform, and possibly even now. I've wanted one-way data flow (React, Elm) forever. We just have rose colored glasses because we were younger, dabbling, all tech was new and non-web tech was just what was available. And we confuse that for some sort of obvious tech superiority. I'd say those were the worst times for appli…

Application development on the web is much more pleasant than what we were doing on any pre-web platform, and possibly even now.

The platform that the web was designed on (NeXTSTEP) was much nicer to develop on. VB programmers had a much easier time than web development now. The web was designed as a document delivery platform and it continues to show how hard it is to get basic functionality going.

Re: I no longer build software

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this doesn't deserve the downvotes. If you don't like rich kids, don't work for them.

That's fair, but before I spent a lot of time in industry, I thought most tech entrepreneurs were genius engineer/business types. I was shocked that a LOT of startup founders are well-connected rich kids who have no skills or ability to lead a tech company. I learned that, while saying that you have a huge trust fund isn't very cool, saying that you're a tech entrepreneur CEO is perceived as cool. So the rich family…

This is kind of true. Young tech entrepreneurs are mostly either harvard/stanford/other top college grads, or theyre from wealthy families. But entrepreneurship has always been this way, its not a middle class career path, and arguably, tech has increased the number of middle class/raw talent trying to start their own companies.

If you were to look back at the early 1900s, or even 1980s, its much better today than back then

Re: I no longer build software

#639

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.

I'm not sure if you think all devs 15 years ago where stupid or all devs today are awesome, but either way I'd say you're wrong.

Re: I no longer build software

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No offense but I think you're being dramatic and a bit naive.

There are plenty of small companies chasing a dream other than total economic world domination. Obviously if you look at Facebook etc that's all you're going to see.

Also, good luck running a business, any business of any size, without caring about money. Once you're responsible for the the livelihood of your employees and yourself (and maybe even SO and your progeny) your perspective changes radically.

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