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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 733 posts

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

#341

Post by adra »

orblivion wrote: post #109

The strangest thing is that I love refactoring, and I sort of assume that it's another one of those things that programmers love to do, but managers keep pushing us to limit our time and move on to things that are visible to customers. But now I'm wondering if that's not the case. Or maybe it's just the sort of programmer who loves abstractions and is cast as a "perfectionist". I'm currently getting my footing now as…

Contractors are generally paid to solve a problem, and you'll be hard pressed to find an employer that believes tchnical.debt is worth paying boat loads of money for. If this is your angle of interest, I'd look into "legacy modernization", which works in a lot of the same ways as code refactoring with the big difference that you generally also need to shift programming languages and computing platforms . I did a gig 10 years ago and learned enough Cobol to be competent but most of the work was learning the business domain, format shift code, refactor over and over.

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

#342

Post by [deleted] »

GrabbinD33ze69 wrote: post #291
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…

ITT: we observe the sheer amount of ignorance & naivety that rears its ugly head when stemlords attempt to discuss any sort of social issue / concept. It's crazy how one would interpret you pointing out the slight misogynistic undertones of the phrase you quoted as "making things political". I'm not going to mention any popular figure by name as that would be quite inflammatory, but it's not wonder certain individual…

[deleted]

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

#343

Post by madeofpalk »

itake wrote: post #248
davidw wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve worked at 3-4 small companies (less than 30 employees) and I’ve never been happy. There is always 1 person that makes my life miserable (constantly rejecting my ideas, ego is larger than their experience level, etc). I’ve worked at a 100, and two 1,000 engineer count companies and I never met any “coding princesses” in those roles. I think part of the problem that triggers this is in small companies, one enginee…

> I’ve worked at 3-4 small companies (less than 30 employees)

What I vastly prefer is the 500-ish size. You can realistically at least know of every other developer (and find those you prefer working with and can learn with), there's more resources than just a 30 person company, and you're just not a tiny insignificant cog in the machine at a 100k mega corp.

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

#344

Post by madeofpalk »

thwawawa1234 wrote: post #256
mpweiher wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> agile has killed the happiness...meetings...rituals...meta-work...not actual productivity. All of that isn't actual agile. It's Fauxgile and has nothing to do with what agile is about, which is about removing impediments to productivity, removing meetings (why were there standups? Because they shouldn't exist in the first place, and if you absolutely positively can't avoid them then at least make them as short as p…

Agile is made up. The vast majority of places “do it wrong”. Coaches come in and make things even worse, with even less understanding. Saying “they are doing it wrong” and having nothing change isn’t doing anything, and it’s not really a great point. (Not specifically calling you out I just hear this all the time) “Fauxagile” *is* agile, because thats what the majority of places in reality do. “Agile” needs a complet…

Productive teams understand that any "way of working" is just a means to an end, and that good teams find a way to work that suits them (and their situation).

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

#346

Post by orblivion »

adra wrote: post #341
orblivion wrote: post #109

The strangest thing is that I love refactoring, and I sort of assume that it's another one of those things that programmers love to do, but managers keep pushing us to limit our time and move on to things that are visible to customers. But now I'm wondering if that's not the case. Or maybe it's just the sort of programmer who loves abstractions and is cast as a "perfectionist". I'm currently getting my footing now as…

Contractors are generally paid to solve a problem, and you'll be hard pressed to find an employer that believes tchnical.debt is worth paying boat loads of money for. If this is your angle of interest, I'd look into "legacy modernization", which works in a lot of the same ways as code refactoring with the big difference that you generally also need to shift programming languages and computing platforms . I did a gig…

I mean yeah that's close enough and something that's crossed my mind as well. I didn't know it had a pithy title like that, I'll look into it. Glad I asked a stupid question and got a smart answer, thank you.

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

#348

Post by xwdv »

elil17 wrote: post #266
xwdv wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could bring race into it somehow then yes the statement might seem more based in historical precedence, rather than some idealistic fantasy world of hyper diversity, assuming most unhappily married men are also white.

I don't really get why any of that matters though. Can't you just appreciate the sentiment regardless of how it is phrased? Seems like your trying to make it political when it just isn't.

Maybe you should think about who is actually making it political, i.e. the people trying to transform the phrase into something politically correct.

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

#349

Post by busterarm »

tsunamifury wrote: post #321

Every few months or so we get these really circle jerky posts by engineers who believe the world of business is them just pumping out code and somehow getting paid. 1) that’s the difference between a job and a hobby. You do the hard parts you’re paid to do sometimes. 2) decisions you don’t like by stakeholders you don’t like aren’t always wrong just because you see some way to “code it”. A product is not just its cod…

It's kind of like all of the threads that I've been reading from smart, well-paid engineers lately bemoaning that unprofitable startup companies should be offering softer landings for mass layoffs.

They have all of this fuzzy thinking around how in this economy broken companies that can't raise any more money are going to somehow take out loans to give people a year of severance...

No profession is immune from practitioners being completely disconnected from reality. We are not geniuses simply because we do X.

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

#350

Post by xwdv »

schrodinger wrote: post #214
xwdv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Language is lovely because you can find so many ways to express creativity! I don't think "Those happily married make great partners, while those unhappily married make great philosophers!" is any less colorful than the original.

It’s bland, safe, and lifeless. The statement has no bite.

The original statement will be read by men and some men will connect to it right away, because rather than envision some abstract person, they are made to immediately picture a man, and in that image they may recognize themselves, like looking at a mirror.

Post reply on HN