I no longer build software • Hacker News Board

Re: I no longer build software

#741

Post by kennu » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

altdatathrow wrote: post #724

kennu wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past 5 years all my projects have been based on AWS Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB and other serverless technologies which are only billed for actual usage and network traffic. So they don't cost much unless they actually get heavy load from users.

I love how the justification of numerous AWS services is always "so it can scale" but if and when that scale ever happens, a new architecture is necessary because the costs become untenable.

I haven't seen this happen myself. In projects that I've been involved with, the justification of using serverless services has been to reduce development costs, because you don't have to setup and develop everything from scratch and spend effort maintaining the infrastructure. The ultimate goal is to avoid doing anything else than define the business logic that is unique to the project.

Re: I no longer build software

#742

Post by bialpio » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #564

derefr wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you define "good"? One criterion that comes to my mind is: prostitution is illegal in plenty of places, so reducing the need for it reduces crime. If by "good" we think "good things are the ones where no-one gets hurt", it can also be seen as an improvement - black market for sex is probably not always a safe space (w/o even considering cases of human trafficking).

Re: I no longer build software

#743

Post by poulsbohemian » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

mcast wrote: post #453

varispeed wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Add me to the woodworking ex-developers (...) I have a lot of time on my hands. Be careful with that table saw...

SawStop for the win!

After the way they went after Bosch, I have no interest in ever buying a SawStop. Good for them for making safe technology, but shame on them for going after someone else who made better technology. The world needs safer options for tools like these, and being litigious bastards helps no-one.

Re: I no longer build software

#744

Post by crawlcrawler » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #716

crawlcrawler wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> were If you meant to say that Google's top engineers _used to_ work on the search engine but nowadays they work on making people click on ads because that's were the money is, then I wholeheartedly agree with you

No, it's like saying the best athletes of our generation use their gifts to get people to buy stuff. That's how they make their money, but ultimately it's not what they spend their gifts doing. They work to be at the top of their sport and other people figure out how to make money on that.

Successful/rock star athletes spend 99.9% of their time honing their athletic skills and the rest on advertising deals. Google on the other hand spend 99.9% of its time on making people click on ads. Because that's their athletic skill? No. Because money.

Re: I no longer build software

#745

Post by abawany » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

mythz wrote: post #239

Seems to be a heavy "all modern software development sucks" vibe in this thread, when the issue is more "software I get paid to write sucks". What software would you write if you could write whatever you wanted using whatever language/technology you wanted? Unless all the joy gets sucked out beforehand, pretty sure I'm going to move to be developing Mobile Apps after I retire. It was the most fun I've had writing App…

I agree - the job that one is in makes a gigantic difference that is sometimes falsely attributed to software development but really just applies to the workplace in question. I have mentioned in other threads how working at places with bad technologies and suck-driven processes brought me down so much that I used to wait in the parking lot on arrival at the workplace and contemplate the misery of the day that awaited me. I am happy I was able to pull out of that tailspin and make necessary changes, even if they made my job history look sub-optimal, and discover that software development remains a great place to be if one makes an effort to find one's niche.

Re: I no longer build software

#746

Post by bart_spoon » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

kilbuz wrote: post #512

bart_spoon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a statistician now working as a machine learning engineer, my response is “definitely not”. It’s all the frustrations of software development, but on top of that you are now frequently dealing with clients/colleagues whose requests are now not simply impractical, but usually defy the laws of mathematics and probability, and an ever present pressure to put out work that amounts to fraud. Analytics have a lot of val…

Thank you for sharing this, these are fair comments. My experience has been more positive, but I see the truth in many of your points. For what it's worth, I have always been involved in controlled experimentation, and never anything related to ML or modeling. Our biggest issue is usually ensuring we are getting accurate counts of events, and when I see all the challenges in that, I wonder how anything more advanced…

I suppose, as with anything, your mileage may vary. And in this case, your mileage will depend largely on your organization. In my experience, most organizations are not equipped or prepared to do what is necessary to make most analytics efforts worthwhile. But in the instances where this is not true, working as a statistician is very rewarding. If you have had a more positive experience than I, more power to you, and kudos to you and the people you work with/for.

Re: I no longer build software

#747

Post by rdevsrex » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

As a self taught dev, looking to go back to college, I'm always debating if I should major in CS or something else like Math or Stats in case software gets old to me and I want to transition to a quantitative field.

But then I don't know what those kind of jobs are like and the chances are that I might feel the same way after n years.

I think it's good to have something that's strictly a hobby where there are no real stakes to the game, so it is play. Work always means responsibility and largely doing it how someone else wants it done, even if you are an entrepreneur.

Re: I no longer build software

#748

Post by phendrenad2 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

Every field looks mysterious and fun from the outside. Your imagination of the work in that field doesn't take into account the fact that you'll have to work with other people, there will be politics, cliques, pointless meetings, fads in the field, disagreeable coworkers, losers, unreliable people. There will also be, at the end of the day, a business that needs to keep afloat, and you'll always have to "just ship it" before it reaches your personal standards. And after you've done everything a few dozen times, on top of everything else, you'll also be bored.

That all said, software development is by far the best career and I'm pretty happy with it.

Re: I no longer build software

#749

Post by tombert » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

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...

Why does everything have to "add something significant to humanity"?

It's not like "innovation" exists in a vacuum; if I figure out, I dunno, a new motor design for an automatic head scratcher, there's no reason that it can't later be used for something you deem to "add something significant to humanity".

Also, who gets to determine what actually adds to humanity? If you really didn't like scratching your head, or it took you a really long time to scratch your head in the morning, then wouldn't having something automatically do that for you be useful?

Travel websites are an example of something that did solve a problem; despite what you said before, people didn't like having to deal with travel agents (I googled around); they didn't like having to book tickets during office hours, they didn't like how hard it was to compare prices, they didn't like how much of a cut the agents took, etc. Buying tickets online save consumers time, money, and probably helped businesses book flights more easily. Businesses that "add significantly to humanity".

I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I think that the binary mentality that you either are working on "useless" or "revolutionary" things is really harmful. I think it puts a lot of pressure on newbies with the thought that they have to change the world, and they might withdraw from STEM stuff because they don't feel like they're making significant enough contributions.

Re: I no longer build software

#750

Post by milesvp » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

phaedrus wrote: post #483

TeMPOraL wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ~23 years behind GP, and I feel the same way as them already. Goes to say, this may be a matter of personality. There were few and brief moments in my career as a software developer when I was truly happy at my work. Most of those involved implementing an architecture or algorithm I figured out from scratch, or took from scientific literature - either as prototype or directly in the product. Sometimes as "hold my…

I like how you describe focusing on your plot of land as a positive coping strategy. I had been doing it instinctively (or necessarily), but had thought of it as some kind of failing. Your comment makes me feel better about it. The end goal of software I work on is to help airplanes land safely. But actually, I work on the software which presents the user interface that displays and sends configuration settings to a…

Oh man. I’ve dealt with so much legacy code I avoid reading comments as long as possible, they lie more than I’d like. Sadly something like bit fields are the one place I feel I have to trust the comments god help you if they’re no longer accurate.