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Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
521–530 of 733 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why is it horrible? It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way. It would be curious to examine in a psychological study…
There's a slight implication because it only covers men that women are the source of unhappiness (e.g. the nagging wife trope), but I agree it's trivial and likely unintentional. Agree with sibling, just as applicable as "happy married people are happy partners, unhappily married people are great philosophers".
I mean, I’ve never heard of any woman being unhappy because of a nagging husband.
The source of unhappiness for women seems to be the reverse. A husband that’s not doing all the things she nags about automatically.
I think priorities are just fundamentally different somehow.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read the original manifesto and principles, and quite frankly I'm not that impressed with them either. Some of the principles are actively harmful, like welcoming changing requirements late in the process.
Yep. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" OK, not terrible, but why not "interactions and tools over individuals and processes"? De-emphasize individual's egos and ritualized processes, focus on the things that get work done and communication between entities. "Working software over comprehensive documentation" Tends to make very frustrating-to-use software, because it's never fully working and has…
> Tends to make very frustrating-to-use software, because it's never fully working and has minimal documentation.
This was written in a time when documentation/spec was often written before the software, without taking into account the difficulties of implementing it.
Agile seems to imply that software comes before documentation in terms of priorities.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#524Earlier 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…
Why is this saying misogynistic? Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage? Also, why is it horrible? It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way. It would be curious to examine in a psychological study…
There are plenty of layers at which it's misogynistic, but the most obvious one perhaps is that it wholly centers around the man in the relationship. Why must the wife be the source of the husband's unhappiness ("nagging wife" trope)? Why does he get to be the great philosopher if they're both unhappy?
You can say "it's just a saying, it would be equally true with the roles reversed" -- but then, why aren't they?
Sure, on the misogyny scale, it's pretty mild, but sayings like this that implicitly reinforce the male-centered world we live in are in some ways the most insidious.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#525[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m with you right up to “if agile is done well”. It’s just a buzzword for practices that people would be doing better otherwise without all the bureaucracy. Pretty sure one of the original authors of the manifesto declared it dead too, but I’m not going to google it because honestly the agile manifesto is not a religious text to me and I think the whole industry grew out of a single fairly common sense idea that got…
It's a fair point. The whole DevOps thing is so ludicrous. I've seen companies that don't just have a "DevOps team" (which is absurd in and of itself) but multiple DevOps Teams, and I'm pretty sure there are some DevOps Teams that have embedded DevOps Teams that in turn have more embedded DevOps Teams. And all of these people are completely gated off from interacting with the people actually building applications by…
I think you are underestimating the DevOps teams.
Cthulhu is a lot easier to please.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#527> 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…
Not enough process can be a pain too. "Just do this for us" without specific requirements, and then the thing you've built is never good enough and needs to be continually refined anyway or it's never used. Those environments are also soul crushing, just in a different way from the ones with too much process.
I consider “Getting the requirements to be versioned on Confluence instead of with a large sequence of excel files” to be one of my big achievements. And I hate Confluence with a passion.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#528> 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…
What are these unicorn companies? I've worked at 7 companies (and interviewed at many more) and never seen anything close to this mythical "company that values programming and real productivity". I feel like they must be exceptionally rare.
The only ones that I’ve found like that are the ones in which either the company, or the team, is led by a former/current programmer.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#529Wow I am exactly the opposite. I do not like hacking. I like designing and optimizing and experimenting with new languages and strategies.
I have mad respect for people like you, and always wished I was able to think in your way better. You should find a startup that has an engineering team that will complement (not mirror) your skills.
Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
#530I am the exact opposite. I mean, I don’t like processes and meetings, but I do like the planning and architecture part much more than I like actually writing code. Usually, if your mind is decently organized, I find that the problem is solved before writing a single line of code. If that happens, then the actual part of writing becomes dull and mechanical - the problem has already been solved. I’ve never understood p…
> I’ve never understood people that just jump into coding without much of a plan
Have you worked on problem spaces that are either so vague, or so large that it’s impossible to form a mental model?
That’s when I just jump into coding, because there’s no alternatives. Whatever I produce will make the powers that be able to crystalize what they actually want.