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

Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

buttondown.email

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 400 posts

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#161

Post by MathCodeLove »

3pt14159 wrote: post #107
dpeck wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong, but I’ll say the part about not going into it for the money is becoming less and less true all the time. For developers who are ~35 and up, almost 100% true, once you get younger than that you’ll find that there are a large and growing minority of people who are very much in it for the money alone without any particular interest or affinity for computing. Their parents, advisors, etc saw how much mo…

That's true, but they also often leave. I've taught three[0] people a little younger than me software that all wanted to do it for the freedom and financial security and two of the three transferred out of software to something else in tech like product management. It really bummed me out too, because it was the two women out of the three. Their lives are still markedly better than before, but I want more women in ac…

I don't understand this weird fetishism with getting X demographic into software/tech. Naturally I don't think that any demographic should be restricted from entering the field, and everyone should be equally encouraged and provided the same opportunities, but more and more I see these pushes for trying to pump the numbers of specific demographics. If someone wants to join the industry, great. If not, also great. I think that to an extent these movements do more harm than good. Women should absolutely be made aware that tech is a viable career path for them as much as anyone else - yet it seems that as of late there's a sort of societal coercion that mimics that historically seen in gender dominated industries like welding for men or nursing for women.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#162

Post by emteycz »

jhgb wrote: post #155
emteycz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, almost nobody uses Ruby without Rails. And my statement holds true for any Ruby framework.

> my statement holds true for any Ruby framework Are you sure all Ruby frameworks use the same "path w.r.t. metaprogramming" as Rails? It's been a while since I looked at them but I recall many priding themselves in the difference back then.

Ruby programmers still use the features, even if their framework doesn't

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#163

Post by mojuba »

willcipriano wrote: post #148
mojuba wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a corporation that would whole heartedly support regulation of the market they're in.

Facebook[0]. Regulation could make it more difficult for competitors to get off the ground so they are in support of regulation to that effect. [0] https://about.facebook.com/regulations/

You bring one of the most hypocritical pages on the Internet as an example?

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#164

Post by uptownfunk »

sudhirj wrote: post #92
WhompingWindows wrote: post #74

My Own Addition: 14. Those who code for a living make good money. I have a lot of friends who went into various fields, and it seems relative to the number of buttons we press daily, anyone who works on software makes great money. We didn't spend a ton of $ to go to medical school and 3 years of residency. We didn't go to law school and take the bar. Most of us went to 4 years, or less, of school, and here we are mak…

The difference here is usually leverage. A teacher spending an hour to teach one child teaches one child, but a programmer who spends an hour writing code to generate a dollar’s worth of value can have that run thousands of times a second or 24/7 even when they’re sleeping. Of course teachers who understand this also make money, see Miss Excel ( https://www.instagram.com/miss.excel/?hl=en ), who was/is making $100k a…

The teachers who teach 30 kids / year x 20 year avg career = 600 kids, on average 10% go on to become coders, so now that one teacher is responsible for generating 60 coders each of whose code goes on to "run thousands of times a second or 24/7 even when they're sleeping." They are more levered in impact than most coders will ever be and yet remain under compensated. It is a sad state of affairs.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#165

Post by boppo1 »

mojuba wrote: post #76
snth wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: life in communist countries is not known for being "not miserable".

That's the most irrelevant counterpoint that can be made here. "Communist" states were also totalitarian, i.e. undemocratic and that was the main reason for their ultimate failure. With democracy they'd be able to self-correct and likely switch to free[er] markets for example. Consumer software and Internet are probably the least regulated areas of engineering today, that's the problem. Compare that to aerospace, con…

What if they weren't democratic because Communism is incompatible with democracy

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#166

Post by jhgb »

emteycz wrote: post #162
jhgb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my statement holds true for any Ruby framework Are you sure all Ruby frameworks use the same "path w.r.t. metaprogramming" as Rails? It's been a while since I looked at them but I recall many priding themselves in the difference back then.

Ruby programmers still use the features, even if their framework doesn't

And you're saying that that was the reason? I'm just trying to divine the relevance of the "other frameworks that chose a different path w.r.t. metaprogramming seem to be the more popular (and growing) choice today" claim.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#167

Post by emteycz »

jhgb wrote: post #166
emteycz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby programmers still use the features, even if their framework doesn't

And you're saying that that was the reason? I'm just trying to divine the relevance of the "other frameworks that chose a different path w.r.t. metaprogramming seem to be the more popular (and growing) choice today" claim.

Sorry, meant languages+frameworks, not just frameworks there. I was thinking of TS+React or C#+ASP.NET in that particular case.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#168

Post by bumby »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #74

My Own Addition: 14. Those who code for a living make good money. I have a lot of friends who went into various fields, and it seems relative to the number of buttons we press daily, anyone who works on software makes great money. We didn't spend a ton of $ to go to medical school and 3 years of residency. We didn't go to law school and take the bar. Most of us went to 4 years, or less, of school, and here we are mak…

>And yet, their jobs are ESSENTIAL and we need people to do them even though they're grueling and underpaid.

I think this touches on an uncomfortable point that many people don’t acknowledge: our current system generally* pays people according to how much they contribute to the economy and not by how much they contribute to society.

The scalable nature of software means developers can disproportionately add value to the economy, even while sometimes simultaneously working on projects that could be arguably a net negative for society.

* yes, we can all point to people who get paid handsomely without adding anything substantive, but general rules are meant to be applied, well…generally

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#169

Post by mojuba »

HeckFeck wrote: post #160
mojuba wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a corporation that would whole heartedly support regulation of the market they're in.

Corporations also have the means and the connections to lobby the state, which ensures the regulations are more to their liking. All helping entrench the corporation. The effect is that small competitors are kept out. They can't afford legal departments and legions of developers to match the regulatory requirements. For now, the Internet is relatively unregulated, which allows alternative media and platforms to emerg…

> Corporations also have the means and the connections to lobby the state, which ensures the regulations are more to their liking.

I understand but under proper democracies regulations are something the society should benefit from in the first place.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#170

Post by lootsauce »

StevePerkins wrote: post #31
mojuba wrote: post #3

No. 13 is gold: > We’re never going to get the broader SE culture to care about things like performance, compatibility, accessibility, security, or privacy, at least not without legal regulations that are enforced. And regulations are written in blood, so we’ll only get enforced legal regulations after a lack of accessibility kills people. Sorry, can't help but blame capitalism for saying "fuck performance, compatibi…

I'm honestly starting to feel like I transported back in time to my 1980's small town childhood, when the adults around me all blamed "Satan" for everything in the world they didn't like. "Capitalism" has about as much to do with software performance as actual devil worship had to do with my Dungeons & Dragons or heavy metal cassettes. And if your life as an engineer or user is "miserable" today, then I wish I could…

Amen to that!

One time at Sunday school in the 80s we did a craft project, little lanterns out of coffee cans with patterns of holes punched in them. Mine was a star and a simple cross. As a kid I knew I could not play with matches but wanted to try out my new creation. So I snuck behind the garage and lit a bunch of matches and melted the candle. A week later my dad finds it, I’m adamant I have no idea where that thing came from. Later on in the day I overhear him tell mom he thinks there are some kids in the area doing some kind of satanic ritual behind the garage.

Rock and Roll however that is from satan.

Post reply on HN