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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?

#581

Post by tome »

osigurdson wrote: post #9
rr888 wrote: post #4

Sounds like most of us you like developing but dont like working in other people's code and design. Corporate work has a bad reputation but lots of upsides. I work in a small team of 5 people on a system that has about 40 users. Its amazingly better when you can talk to everyone, know what all the users want, dont have to worry about constant uptime or scalability. Flexibility and budget to pay for good platforms. Ju…

>> 5 people on a system that has about 40 users Gosh, that is expensive software!

There's a really interesting phenomenon at play here whereby osigurdson said that something was expensive (and it's probably about $1M/year/users) and everyone has replied as though he/she said that it was too expensive.

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

#582

Post by lelanthran »

ajmurmann wrote: post #541
lelanthran wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, are you saying that the audience of the statement is on purpose only men? Isn't it? Wasn't Socrates replying to a question from a young man when he (allegedly) said that? Since the origin of that quote is directly in response to a man, isn't it aimed at ... men? [1] https://www.quora.com/Did-Socrates-really-say-if-you-get-a-b...

I really want to take your argument as a reason why it's 100% ok to phrase it exclusionary, but then I get a response like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34376163 and am reminded how that general tone will keep women away from our industry rather than attract them.

> that general tone will keep women away from our industry rather than attract them.

I don't "tones" have anything to do with it; in the 80s, Law, Accounting and Medicine[1] was absolutely dominated by men. If you think that introverted nerds are sexist, they have nothing on how doctors, lawyers and accountants were, nor how sexist the purchasers of those services were (often assuming that the men would be more competent).

And yet, today those professions have as many (if not more) females than males.

It's a stretch to think that general tone of an industry was responsible for females leaving the profession filled with introverted IT nerds and moving to high-powered and high-status executive professions.

[1] Other than nurses, in which men are still only a rounding error.

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

#583

Post by dzikimarian »

Aeolun wrote: post #518
mulmen wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a place like that and it was awesome. Unfortunately we were so good at what we did across the board that we got bought by another company to integrate into their larger offering. It made a lot of sense from a business perspective but the tech team in our office was made redundant and so my time there came to an end. I think this is the inevitable conclusion to good, small companies. Since it actually work…

Is it really that hard for owners to resist the alure of a buyout? I dunno, I always like to think that I’d continue doing the good thing that I’ve got going.

Try reversing this argument and talk about employee resisting much better offer, to remain loyal and you'll get eaten alive by commenters :-)

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

#584

Post by JohnBooty »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #151
JohnBooty wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate dealing with many developers in a professional setting. They're too busy trying to look good and move up a ladder. Sometimes too true, in my experience. A lot also don't even really want to do actual work. If there are two solutions and one is clearly superior but a bit harder to do most people want to wimp out and do the easy solution and deal with a bunch of pain for 6 months that could have been avoided if…

> This was surprising to read. Generally I feel like engineers want to do the right thing, but are pressured into short term kludges by management. I would say many of the time engineers don't want to do something it's a better solution but they'll claim some technical reason why their way is better. A good example of this is, I was working on a geo search api endpoint that had to work with the TPEG specs. The system…

That was an interesting story to read.

I would say it sounds more like "they didn't have the chops/experience to do it" and less like "they didn't want to do it?"

In situations like that my instinct as a developer is to figure out the hard part first. Some sort of prototype to prove that hey, this design works and can serve X requests per second. In other words some basic prototyping and research... a "spike" in scrum/agile terms.

Managers have viewed this as insanity. They think optimization is something you can sprinkle on later. Surprisingly a lot of developers do too.

I've been on two projects where this situation happened. In one I was able to save the project. In the other I wasn't.

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

#585

Post by __pache__ »

Aeolun wrote: post #518
mulmen wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a place like that and it was awesome. Unfortunately we were so good at what we did across the board that we got bought by another company to integrate into their larger offering. It made a lot of sense from a business perspective but the tech team in our office was made redundant and so my time there came to an end. I think this is the inevitable conclusion to good, small companies. Since it actually work…

Is it really that hard for owners to resist the alure of a buyout? I dunno, I always like to think that I’d continue doing the good thing that I’ve got going.

You try dealing with everyone's problems and hitting all the deadlines all the time..!

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

#586

Post by pc2g4d »

carl_sandland wrote: post #457

I empathize and completely agree; I like the distinction made between programming and 'software engineering'; the latter is all pure fantasy driven by the profit motive. I think we've been too nice to capitalists and need to reclaim our hobby from the evil. I'd so like to work in a well organized coop of some sort, on interesting challenges, damn the profit motive. And agile can go burn in hell, however 'correct' you…

Tell me more about this coop...

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

#587

Post by brazzy »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #382
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Working software over comprehensive documentation" > Tends to make very frustrating-to-use software, because it's never fully working and has minimal documentation. Another problem: It makes onboarding new engineers difficult. Without any documentation on what each API endpoint does, or the purpose of every repo, getting an understanding of how the system works ends up requiring scanning through code manually or t…

"over" does not mean "to the complete exclusion of".

The point is that documentation by itself doesn't deliver any value, and there are diminishing returns with amount and detail level of documentation.

Agile doesn't say you shouldn't document, it says you shouldn't spend more time documenting your API endpoints than Implementing them.

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

#589

Post by Aeolun »

dzikimarian wrote: post #583
Aeolun wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that hard for owners to resist the alure of a buyout? I dunno, I always like to think that I’d continue doing the good thing that I’ve got going.

Try reversing this argument and talk about employee resisting much better offer, to remain loyal and you'll get eaten alive by commenters :-)

Is that so? I see a lot of people not wanting to switch for solely more money because they expect to hate it at a potential new company.

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

#590

Post by mobiuscog »

casey2 wrote: post #557
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…

These processes exist for a reason, even if nobody knows what it is. Over time companies that did these things survived, maybe nowadays it is vestigial, but the burden of proof is on new successful companies that don't have these practices.

I think it's more marketing and profiteering based on correlation over causation.

Almost every process these days is bought in by a new managerial hire, or after attending an event, where a talk or book that shows X companies that are very successful all followed the Y practice, and so 'we should too' as it's obviously the path to success. Rarely is there reflection on whether the process is working, and blame is laid at the feet of the workers.

Despite many recollections and experiences retold about how processes may not work, they are silenced by the advocates of such processes who will show how successful they were (and also just happen to make their living by advocating rather than actually being on the ground).

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