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Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#311

Post by ianmcgowan »

wpietri wrote: post #254
kraig911 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000x times this. It's a weird thing our profession. There's a horrible but apt (misogynistic even) saying. Happily married men are happy husbands - Unhappily married men are great philosophers. I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that…

> agile has killed the happiness of our industry I don't think you're wrong, but I should point out that Agile started out as a rebellion against "meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity". As somebody who got involved in one of the Agile tributaries before the term "Agile" was coined, I'd say the actual problem is older and deeper. I look forward to another rebellion, but would-be revolutionaries…

It seems that this generation's revolutionaries are always the next generation's reactionaries..

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#312

Post by makestuff »

davidw wrote: post #183
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

> I have come to a realization that I don't really enjoy Software Engineering(& the processes that it comes with) but I do love programming & solving problems. I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Some software companies can turn even the simplest tasks into a grueling series of processes, endless meetings, and joint work across a big number of “stakeholders”. These companies will take the jo…

I think the real "unicorns" are * Small/medium size companies where you recognize most everyone even if you don't work with them. There are enough people so you don't have to do things you're not qualified for like in the very early days of a startup. * Steady growth, but not crazy, venture fueled moonshots. * Selling something that earns enough money to grow the business in a fairly organic way. I worked in a place…

The downside is a significant comp reduction unless it is some sort of trading/hedge fund.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#313

Post by wnolens »

syntaxing wrote: post #81

It’s going to sound a bit harsh, but what you hate is engineering discipline. Every engineer I know absolutely hates it but it’s like being an adult. There’s a ton of things that suck but it’s important to do in order to survive. Most process suck and some are even bloated. But they’re there usually for a reason (mostly good). No good product is sustainable without engineers with good discipline.

That's my take, too. It's platonic ideal v.s. real life. The latter is frustrating, but it's.. real.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#314

Post by yawnxyz »

I'm very similar to you!

I'm a research software engineer at a medical research institution in Sydney. I'm the only engineer / developer type person on my team, and I work with other microbiologists, physicians and bioinformaticians (who know scripting/programming but specifically for answering biological questions). The system I'm building tracks samples in the lab, patient data coming in from the hospitals, and genomics data from the sequencing lab and bioinformaticians.

I do "engineer" type things, but I have full autonomy and I support the rest of the team. What we do is impactful too — our clinical trial just treated three patients.

I don't write unit tests because I can't be bothered. I do write documentation though, but for myself.

Downsides are: it gets lonely being the only one that does this, and there's no one to bounce ideas off of; no one else knows what you work on or understands what you're building (which can be a good or a bad thing); you're that "IT person" in the back.

Oh and the pay is awful compared to real tech jobs

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#315

Post by __dave__ »

908B64B197 wrote: post #216
floydian10 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I have some hope that the current high-profile layoffs makes (at least some) non-technical people to leave the industry. I have even started seeing more and more developers that have 0 interest in programming and are in it for the money, and it shows.

The great outsourcing panic of the late 90's and early 00's was pretty great at weeding out those who didn't care one bit about code. Anecdotally, but a new grad was telling me a number of his peers in college had the explicit goal of not coding two years out of a CS degree. Most of them were eying PM positions or "Tech Evangelist" roles.

I saw this exact same thing when studying CS in the early 2000s. A bunch of people said they only wanted to write code for a couple of years then get an MBA and become managers. Sounded crazy to me!

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#316

Post by jacobr1 »

kraig911 wrote: post #19
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

> I have come to a realization that I don't really enjoy Software Engineering(& the processes that it comes with) but I do love programming & solving problems. I can almost guarantee that you’re just at the wrong company. Some software companies can turn even the simplest tasks into a grueling series of processes, endless meetings, and joint work across a big number of “stakeholders”. These companies will take the jo…

1000x times this. It's a weird thing our profession. There's a horrible but apt (misogynistic even) saying. Happily married men are happy husbands - Unhappily married men are great philosophers. I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry because it's met with a lot of back and forth, meetings, rituals, and meta-work and not actual productivity (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that…

> I really feel agile has killed the happiness of our industry

Waterfall had its own endless set of meetings and downsides. I'm not sure agile changed that at all in the large, regardless of how "well" agile was implemented. Some teams did have project management that "shielded" teams, but that can happen under agile too, depending upon how it is structured.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#318

Post by bennysonething »

feoren wrote: post #304
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're clearly passionate about something here, but it's not totally clear what it is or why. It might be interesting to read what you have to say, but you need to chill, organize your thoughts, and stop calling other posters idiots for disagreeing with you. Right now it feels like we're catching half of an angry shower argument against someone who's not here. I can tell, because I've made posts like this before, and…

What? I found their post informative and yours extremely patronising. They're not defensive about Aristotle, they are pointing that the quote seems to be misinterpreted because it's about relationships between men and woman.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#319

Post by baby »

Tangent, but I realized the same thing about competitive gaming. Games can be a lot of fun when you’re playing with noobs and you’re a noob yourself. But when you get good and start playing with good people then there’s all these things that you need to do all the time and that you need to be aware of. It demands a lot of focus, and rigor, and poop shoveling type of redundant tasks (e.g. always zigzaging when you walk to avoid snipers) that a lot of the fun is lost. But of course, competing at a high level is something that’s also much more rewarding, and in that sense shipping a serious product that’s used by many people is much more rewarding to fucking around. Doesn’t mean you can’t do both. Maybe that’s why I have so much fun when I discover a new language or framework.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#320

Post by Existenceblinks »

To me, the cult part is the worst in this industry. Job market is rotten and it spreads to how programming is adopted. In short, cult -> demands of mediocre tools -> supply of idiots. Apology if the tone is too extreme to this post's theme.
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