321–330 of 400 posts
Pair programming or mobbing are a huge waste of resources. I know that myself I can't actually get anything done unless I'm in control. The only use this sort of this could have is to train juniors or hand over projects.
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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.
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…
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…
Very few people truly have a passion for their work and for most , it's just a means to an end. This has been true for all other "high paying" professions such as law and medicine. One of my best friends is a lawyer and he happened to mention that no one really gets into law because to fulfill some higher purpose..
Further, I don't think it really has an impact on the quality of the work they produce, you don't need a spiritual awakening to build good systems. You just need to be vigilant and gain experience.
As an older engineer (is mid thirties old?..) I've grown out of this and now look elsewhere to nourish my need for numinous in things like philosophy, art, music, relationships, etc. When I was younger, I used to naively think my identity was a "Software Engineer"; now looking back I chuckle at that outlook on life.
On a final note, I would argue that more people joining our profession is a _good_ thing. It will create more jobs, increase demand and we end up with a stronger workforce.
I don't think gatekeeping a field yields to a healthy outcome.
> 12. The open source maintainer problem The what problem? The only problem I see are entitled developers who think that putting stuff on GitHub and calling it “open source” is somehow an occupation for which they deserve a salary.
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People talk about other people all the time - regardless of gender. I would guarantee they talked about male employees as well but your friend likely didn't mentally catalogue those discussions because they weren't relevant to her. Confirmation bias is very real. Maybe this one specific anecdote you're providing really was an example of rampant discrimination - I don't know - either way it certainly isn't indicative…
No, discrimination and x-ism is not neccesary to make an environment that women don't want to work at, only sufficient. People being regular-shitty, combined with context, like making comments about the appearance and intelligence of the only other woman in the office, can create an inhospitable environment that forces women out. Companies that wish to hire and retain women should proactively create a hospitable envi…
Regardless, my original stance was more aimed at the societal push of "get x demographic into tech". I'm not going to retype my thoughts on that - go read the other comments of mine in this comments section to get a clearer picture.
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It’s definitely a fraught topic, but if you go in using loaded language like “fetishism” to describe a position that many people have rationally arrived at in good faith, then yeah people are going to call you a jerk. Part of the reason that I don’t think your paragraph 1 assumption is flawed is that there is evidence that men and women were equally interested in programming before the 80’s, but that a combination of…
You're correct about my language choice, I could (and should) have used more neutral language to describe my position. While I do believe that there are some fundamental differences in the interests and abilities of the genders (neither for better nor worse, they just are) I also agree that's its a slippery slope that has been abused in the past. Societal pressures and conditioning certainly play a role, however I th…
Given how slanted these stakes are and how many times society as a whole has underestimated women as a whole, I think the right answer here is to err on the side of trying to get women and other underrepresented minorities interested into tech.
[0] bear in mind what I said about the particular way I’m putting my belief into practice and that I do not believe in “reverse discrimination” to even the scales.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I didn’t mention any statistics so I’m not sure what you’re going on about. I’m saying those who don’t go to school make less money. That is empirically true. Selection bias is irrelevant here to the original comment.
> Seems easy to prove wrong by trivially looking at high school dropout vs graduate incomes.
There is an implied statistical argument here that by plotting "did X drop out" on one axis and their future income on another, that a correlation would refute a statement that "Schools cause students to earn less".
Specifically, you would be:
1. Gathering many examples of individuals(a "population") with boolean "did they drop out?" V1, some income metric V2, maybe some others.
2. Comparing and aggregating V1 and V2 across the population
3. Using it to refute a statement S
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…
Software development is heavily skewed towards the young demographics. We just don't think about it when we are young and still in love with computers. In the immortal words quoted by Steve McConnell over 20 years ago: "Wanted: Young, skinny, wirey fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week."
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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.
I definitely think remote group programming is possible, but I reckon it'd be really hard to get right _starting_ remote, and it'd never be quite as good as in person is.