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Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

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Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#351

Post by bb88 »

friedman23 wrote: post #343
the_gastropod wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the trend is more of a pendulum swinging back and forth than a single cycle of "static" => "dynamic" => "oh, dynamic was bad, so static" explanation. Prolog, Smalltalk, Lisp, etc. are likely older than most of the engineers now very enthusiastic about static typing. Static typing is fashionable right now, I suspect, because it's the first time many engineers are stumbling upon it via Typescript, Sorbet, Haske…

Static typing is net 0 cost. We don't need to be "honest" static typing is obviously not free you need to think of types. The real revelation was that the cost of dynamic languages far exceeds the cost of a statically typed language.

You're not wrong, but yet you are.

There were failures with Ada as well as I recall. Statically typed. Ahead of it's time. But in some critical use cases, it failed. It also cost a lot to maintain. Compilers/IDE's were super expensive. Yet there were cases of undefined behavior that you still had to (hopefully) catch in a peer review.

This was the case of the Arianne 5 rocket explosion caused by software written in statically typed Ada. It's worth a read through:

https://itsfoss.com/a-floating-point-error-that-caused-a-dam...

Java and the log4j mess are similar. It's a statically typed language, but a poorly reviewed code base. The static typing didn't catch the security hole. And it's cost the US millions of dollars so far to fix it.

Static typing may be nice and all, but it sure as hell ain't a silver bullet.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#353

Post by JuliusBranson »

Uehreka wrote: post #326
MathCodeLove wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree about the “equally important” stuff, and here’s why: If I’m wrong and the overwhelming majority of women really don’t like programming, I’ll have wasted some of my time, but no one will have been materially harmed[0]. However, if I am right, then there are currently a large number of people who are being pushed away from a career or hobby that could increase their overall happiness and/or standard of livin…

I'm only interested in why you believe what you believe. How smart are you? What do you value most? How truth-oriented is your epistemology?

I'm glad you don't discriminate (nothing "reverse" about it) against men, but many do, and since [your views are wrong](https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Difference-Female-Brains-Au...) it's tantamount to sex-based theft and redistribution.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#354

Post by Izkata »

Mezzie wrote: post #211
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #111

> But especially so with me, given I care about weird exotic technology at the boundary of programming. Smells a bit like a humblebrag. Here's mine: But especially so with me, given I care about extremely high-Quality software. > Also also also, most muggles don’t want to program their own computers, much in the same way that most muggles don’t want to do their own taxes or wire their own houses. This is true, but I'…

> This is true, but I'm uncomfortable referring to non-techs as "muggles." Some of the least-computer-tech-savvy people I know, are doctors, lawyers, and scientists (and I actually know quite a few). Agreed. As a tech educator, STOP. I've been teaching people to use technology for decades, and, like with math, a huge stumbling block is "I'm not smart enough for this; only 'tech people' can understand this." And no, n…

> > but I'm uncomfortable referring to non-techs as "muggles." Some of the least-computer-tech-savvy people I know, are doctors, lawyers, and scientists (and I actually know quite a few).

> That's fine, but it doesn't make you INHERENTLY BETTER than people who are color theory nerds or whatever.

Consider that this meaning of the word is only used by the antagonists in Harry Potter. Everyone else uses it in a neutral way, and Arthur Weasley even admires muggle ingenuity.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#355

Post by Mezzie »

Izkata wrote: post #354
Mezzie wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is true, but I'm uncomfortable referring to non-techs as "muggles." Some of the least-computer-tech-savvy people I know, are doctors, lawyers, and scientists (and I actually know quite a few). Agreed. As a tech educator, STOP. I've been teaching people to use technology for decades, and, like with math, a huge stumbling block is "I'm not smart enough for this; only 'tech people' can understand this." And no, n…

> > but I'm uncomfortable referring to non-techs as "muggles." Some of the least-computer-tech-savvy people I know, are doctors, lawyers, and scientists (and I actually know quite a few). > That's fine, but it doesn't make you INHERENTLY BETTER than people who are color theory nerds or whatever. Consider that this meaning of the word is only used by the antagonists in Harry Potter . Everyone else uses it in a neutral…

Oh man, a pedantic HP correction. That takes me back!

Unfortunately, that it isn't the term's colloquial usage, and as a descriptivist, I fall on the side of how language is used by its native speakers. Rather like (staying in the realm of YA fiction) the Hunger Games as an actual big screen spectacle was rather...uncomfortable from an actually thematic standpoint.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#356

Post by mcguire »

"The Unix philosophy of “do one thing well” doesn’t actually work that well. Dan Luu explains this better than I could."

The question is, what works better?

Nothing in software development works particularly well. But some things don't work at all.

"TDD/FP/Agile zealots are probably zealots because adopting TDD/FP/Agile/Whatever made them better programmers than they were before. I mean it would be better if they learned TDD/FP/Agile/Whatever without becoming zealots, and incorporated their ideas into an overall synthesis of a nuanced programming philosophy, but I don’t think most people are interested in doing that anyway. Possibly because “synthesizing a nuanced programming philosophy” only matters / is useful to a very small slice of programmers, because it’s honestly a kinda weird thing to expect tens of millions of people to be that weirdly obsessive about their job."

But it's not kinda weird to expect tens of millions of people to behave like zealots of a thing that doesn't work particularly well? (A non-zealot cannot work with a zealot without at least acting like a zealot. The true zealot won't allow it.)

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#357

Post by mgaunard »

stnmtn wrote: post #321
mgaunard wrote: post #205

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.

Do you think that this is true of every programmer, or that there are people who do experience increase in productivity from pairing?

We all have our own set of values.

Myself I value independence and self-learning, so I would be inclined towards having a negative opinion of people that require the constant assistance that pair programming provides.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#358

Post by mikestew »

dpeck wrote: post #87
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…

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…

...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

That was true 35 years ago, and without the metric butt-ton of money being paid now (though programming has always paid well within my lifetime). I've worked with those folks. The reason you might not see it is because they either left the field they hated, or worse, they stuck around long enough to become managers of what they don't understand.

it’s important to realize that we’re not really the professional of child prodigies that it once was.

Mmm, I don't know that it ever "was". Ignore the Carmacks, Wozniaks, et. al., of the world and you'll find that most folks holding programming jobs had the standard four year degree (because you were unlikely to get hired in 1985 without one), working on internal LOB apps.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#359

Post by mcguire »

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…

These two points, yours and the parent, should probably be #0; many of the other "uncomfortable truths" follow from them.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#360

Post by JoeAltmaier »

mikestew wrote: post #358
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…

...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 That was true 35 years ago, and without the metric butt-ton of money being paid now (though programming has always paid well within my lifetime). I've worked with those folks. The reason you might not see it is because…

Unlikely to get hired? Not in my experence; not in 1985. A healthy fraction of the folks working in Silicon Valley were musicians! Certainly not many were degreed in computer science because very few were back then.

So what brought them to Silicon Valley? For a great many, love of the machine.

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