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Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

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Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#311

Post by pbourke »

handrous wrote: post #293
ipaddr wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you above 35?

Not that poster, but I am over 35, and I hate computers. Fucking around with computers without being paid to do it is just about the last thing I'd want to do. They're miserable time-sinks unless you've got a strong need for something only they can do, or you just like tinkering with them for the sake of it. Which, I did enjoy once upon a time, but not anymore, and I don't have any hobbies that really need computers…

I feel lucky that at 44 I still get a thrill when something runs as expected for the first time or when tests go all green. I still enjoy working with software in the general sense and learning new things in my areas of interest. Organizations, however, and the environments that they create (both human and software) are a different story ...

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#312

Post by MichaelBurge »

endisneigh wrote: post #260
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes there’s actually a significant benefit from school on lifetime earnings, which is at best debatable if not actually at odds with all available research.

I’d love to see the research you’re citing. Are you suggesting kids would be better off if schools didn’t exist with respect to lifetime earnings? Seems easy to prove wrong by trivially looking at high school dropout vs graduate incomes.

It's not that trivial, because the types of people that choose to drop out might be the types of people that earn less, even if there are no causal links at all.

For example, they might be risk averse and a risk averse personality might lead to other decisions that make more money. (or the opposite)

It would be easy for a fad to arise calling education unnecessary and a waste of time, and for people to consider the option to drop out less risky just because it gets talked about more. So even if the correlation held statistically now, in any year it could change just because the subgroup of risk-averse people are more likely to consider it. So you still couldn't use it to make permanent decisions(like creating a school system for hundreds of years).

Homeschooling vs. high school graduates would remove "choice to drop out" from the student, but then "choice to homeschool" on the parents might carry down genetically or culturally and maybe "aversion to government authority" improves earnings on average.

I try to reject all statistics on "easily understandable" social topics. Leave that for scientists only. It's too easy to make a mistake and not get any warning that you made a mistake, and believe wrong things your whole life.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#313

Post by aaroninsf »

Are these uncomfortable?

I don't think they're cynical (as stated); I think most of them are common sense and I had assumed consensus understanding. But I don't spend much time with young whippersnappers.

It's true that experience, and what appears to the irrationally exuberant to be cynicism, are regularly coextensive...

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#314

Post by endisneigh »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #312
endisneigh wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to see the research you’re citing. Are you suggesting kids would be better off if schools didn’t exist with respect to lifetime earnings? Seems easy to prove wrong by trivially looking at high school dropout vs graduate incomes.

It's not that trivial, because the types of people that choose to drop out might be the types of people that earn less, even if there are no causal links at all. For example, they might be risk averse and a risk averse personality might lead to other decisions that make more money. (or the opposite) It would be easy for a fad to arise calling education unnecessary and a waste of time, and for people to consider the o…

Just because one is homeschooled doesn’t mean they don’t have a teacher.

All observable evidence shows those who complete their schooling in any form make more money

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#315

Post by speby »

Mezzie wrote: post #133
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…

Agreed. I spend a lot of time on TikTok (my main interests tech-wise are HCI, digital discovery, and social computing so it's like catnip) and a LOT of younger people are going into tech for the money. I'm 33 and I started programming in the 90s (I was raised by two geek parents a la Larry Page who were supportive), so I'm sort of in-between the two 'generations'. At age 37 and above, pretty much everybody is either…

What you're seeing is really the same pattern as the late 90's dotcom boom-bust. Then, too, TONS of people (and their sisters and mothers) went into the "Information Superhighway" to become "WebMasters" and develop "Web Sites" for businesses large and small as more and more money plowed into those companies and a rush for talent, including not-very-much talent was drawn into the field because of the $. When the dotcom bust happened, and believe me, there will be another (even if different) correction again in the future, many of those same people will exit the field from layoffs or finding another job in tech again becoming hard. They'll migrate to another field that pays OK that they can find their thing.

And then, rinse-and-repeat, we'll probably see the same cycle again in the 2020s thru the 2030s.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#316

Post by citrin_ru »

StevePerkins wrote: post #16
varjag wrote: post #6

There’s no rigorous academic evidence for this, but a lot of companies have been backporting typescript/mypy/sorbet onto existing dynamic codebases and the case studies have been overwhelmingly positive. Not to be a buzzkill, but migration reports from any tech A to tech B are always overwhelmingly positive when the industry has a newlywed period with tech B. Save for a clear, undeniable failure the stakeholders will…

Number one, static type checking is hardly a "new tech" for which the industry is in a "newlywed period". If anything, it is the middle-aged wife that the industry's crawling back to, as the passion fades from its dynamic mistress dalliance. Secondly, the obvious counterexample here is MongoDB. Way too hyped-up during its honeymoon, and then almost immediately crapped on by the entire industry (to the point where we'…

> Number one, static type checking is hardly a "new tech"

Static typing of course not new, but migrations usually happen to relatively new languages: Go, Rust, TypeScript. I haven't seen reports recently of any large migrations to Ada, Pascal or even C++ or other old (20yo+) language.

> MongoDB. Way too hyped-up during its honeymoon, and then almost immediately crapped

MongoDB is still used in new projects but it is not longer getting a lot of up-votes on HN. It is somewhat similar to PHP - HN doesn't like it but the language is still widely used.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#317

Post by MichaelBurge »

endisneigh wrote: post #314
MichaelBurge wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that trivial, because the types of people that choose to drop out might be the types of people that earn less, even if there are no causal links at all. For example, they might be risk averse and a risk averse personality might lead to other decisions that make more money. (or the opposite) It would be easy for a fad to arise calling education unnecessary and a waste of time, and for people to consider the o…

Just because one is homeschooled doesn’t mean they don’t have a teacher. All observable evidence shows those who complete their schooling in any form make more money

It's illegal not to provide schooling of some sort, so that is yet a 3rd variable("willingness to commit crimes") that could be a better predictor.

I don't care whether schooling causes or doesn't cause a benefit: You called it "trivial" by looking at statistics, and that supreme confidence that there can be no other explanation seems unjustified.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#318

Post by jrochkind1 »

lexicality wrote: post #187
jrochkind1 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some of the first I've heard of mobbing. Is it generally (or in your positive experiences) done remotely, in-person, or could be either?

I've only ever done it in person and I can't imagine it would work particularly well remotely. Maybe you could attempt to recreate the experience in VR but I don't think we have anywhere near the technology level to accurately recreate 7 people physically in the same space as each other constantly moving around, having side conversations and whiteboarding things

Thanks, that's what I suspected!

That makes sense, the "constantly moving around having side-conversations and whiteboarding things" being a good part of it.

After reading your description, I could see myself liking in-person mobbing too, and it really being a different thing than "pairing" (which I don't love)... but trying to do it remote sounds nightmarish to me personally.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#319

Post by pbourke »

citrin_ru wrote: post #316
StevePerkins wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number one, static type checking is hardly a "new tech" for which the industry is in a "newlywed period". If anything, it is the middle-aged wife that the industry's crawling back to, as the passion fades from its dynamic mistress dalliance. Secondly, the obvious counterexample here is MongoDB. Way too hyped-up during its honeymoon, and then almost immediately crapped on by the entire industry (to the point where we'…

> Number one, static type checking is hardly a "new tech" Static typing of course not new, but migrations usually happen to relatively new languages: Go, Rust, TypeScript. I haven't seen reports recently of any large migrations to Ada, Pascal or even C++ or other old (20yo+) language. > MongoDB. Way too hyped-up during its honeymoon, and then almost immediately crapped MongoDB is still used in new projects but it is…

> I haven't seen reports recently of any large migrations to Ada, Pascal or even C++ or other old (20yo+) language.

Things are quietly rewritten in Java and C# all the time. I’m sure it happens with C++ as well since the more recent quality of life improvements have landed in that language.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#320

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

> We didn't spend a ton of $ to go to medical school and 3 years of residency.

There's plenty of suffering on top of that time and money too.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012023/http://www.medica...

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