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Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

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Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#141

Post by pfannkuchen »

pluijzer wrote: post #137

After many years I'm still pasionate about programming, still do it in my spare time and enjoy my work. But, it really does need to be in a language and platform I enjoy. I also notice that if you have a job with a more niche language all your collegues will be passionate about the work too. This is why I personally do not care much about language comparisons. It might be that the language of my choice is only margin…

Niche languages filter for nerds, and nerds are more fun to work with? (if you are good at what you do, else you will incur the nerds’ wrath).

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#142

Post by kstenerud »

In 2 days time I'll mark my 27th year as a professional programmer (and just over 40 years since I started programming). I've worked in small companies, big companies, and mega-corporations. I've been a programmer, manager, team lead and CTO. And in doing so I discovered that I don't like managing people, I don't like meetings, and I don't like paperwork. I like long periods of focus.

So I'm a software dev/architect again, working in esoteric and interesting spaces, and will continue to do so until I "retire" (meaning that I switch to full time on my open source projects).

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#143

Post by ehnto »

nine_k wrote: post #100
emodendroket wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's well said... I feel this way even about pure fun pursuits like video games. Yeah, I still like video games, but I also like time with my daughter and wife or getting outside and playing sports or a bunch of other things I didn't use to do that kind of crowd out a well I've gone to many, many times anyway.

I think video games (like movies, books, etc) are a different kind: they are about consuming, while programming (electronics, carpentry, etc) is about creating. Some games, like Sim City or Factorio, sort of blur the line though.

Games are somewhere in between, you are engaged in the doing of the game and that itself can be creative and involve problem solving. Certainly moreso than TV, but less so than a craft of some kind.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#144

Post by pavlov »

cheschire wrote: post #18

I once had a PM who told me coding was just a stepping stone to them in their career. I couldn’t understand, I thought they must not have been a “natural” like me. Fast forward a few years, after taking on more mentorship roles, then staff responsibilities, then slipping into project oversight roles… She was so right. Coding was a great stepping stone. Several years ago my father got promoted to some leadership role.…

> "Several years ago my father got promoted to some leadership role. In our conversation about it, he told me he had asked to get back closer tech, but his boss declined and said tech specialists are a dime a dozen. Technical leadership is very expensive to find though, and once you find one you don’t let them go back to the production line."

Ah, the foundational myth of middle management.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#145

Post by wingerlang »

doppel wrote: post #133
irrational wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technical leadership is very expensive to find though, and once you find one you don’t let them go back to the production line. I have a friend at our company who is a gifted programmer. He was moved into a management position. He discovered that he hated working in a leadership position. He tried to get them to move him back to an individual contributor position. They refused. He said, move me back or I quit. It t…

I feel it's completely acceptable to wish to stay in an IC position, but to refuse outright to give advise or share the experience (it's hard to tell from your short paragraph) seems... odd? It's acceptable to want to stay in a specific role, but I am not certain I feel it's acceptable to eschew an increasing responsibility or mentoring role as you gain experience. That way lies the "genius programmer that works alon…

> I feel it's completely acceptable to wish to stay in an IC position, but to refuse outright to give advise or share the experience (it's hard to tell from your short paragraph) seems... odd?

I think it depends on how much time they expected him to take out of his days. My girlfriend resigned from a job after becoming a go-to person for everything and everyone. It caused her to not have time for her own work, effectively being way underpaid, and being stressed all the time.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#146

Post by ehnto »

bruce511 wrote: post #83
linguae wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this point of view. Unfortunately, for those who entered computing out of a passion for it, it’s difficult to work for employers or managers where computing isn’t a passion. This leads to all sorts of practices that suck the joy out of programming (e.g., Leetcode, meetings, KPIs, PIPs, certain design decisions, etc.), reducing it to a corporate “monkey dance.” Maybe I have rose-colored glasses, or maybe…

I think you're getting vloser to the root issue. You can work with passionate people. You can work for a large corporate, for a huge paycheck and stock options. Pick one. I work for a small company, and I make a great living, but it's a fraction of a fang salary, and there is no stock to option. On the upside I'm responsible for my code base, I work on whatever I like, (which largely overlaps with customer needs sinc…

Small companies are where the fun software work is for sure. That has been my secret sauce for a while.

It is the corporate environments and the entanglement of Business BS that ruins software work for me.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#147

Post by newswasboring »

ArcMex wrote: post #132

>Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? Yes, absolutely!

I've reached a age where I have to answer "define young". Early thirties is weird. All the people I respect and learn from are still older than me, but not old old.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#148

Post by bratbag »

hdidhxifj wrote: post #138
cheschire wrote: post #18

I once had a PM who told me coding was just a stepping stone to them in their career. I couldn’t understand, I thought they must not have been a “natural” like me. Fast forward a few years, after taking on more mentorship roles, then staff responsibilities, then slipping into project oversight roles… She was so right. Coding was a great stepping stone. Several years ago my father got promoted to some leadership role.…

or you're probably not that good programmer...?

Or they are better at both then you, but value different things.

Who can tell?

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#149

Post by ryandrake »

hgs3 wrote: post #49

> But there is something becoming more familiar to me as I go back to the wild west of C programming (where very little happens behind the scenes I might point out - no garbage collection here!). I share this sentiment. I pursued computer science because of the romanticized notation of tracking every bit and byte and talking directly to the hardware. I know I'm not alone given the popularity of old-school fantasy con…

> It saddens me to say but if I were starting over today I might not enter the field professionally. Most modern development is gluing components together and wrangling packages. It's so far removed from the machine and the distance is only growing.

I don't know what's sadder: That this kind of programming is becoming a lost art, or that nobody seems to care. I got my first job out of college partially because in the interview when I was asked to implement some algorithm XYZ in "any language I choose" I went with X86 assembly and nailed it. Well-performing code was highly valued at that company. Knowing how to ensure your code fit into the cache and your memory accesses stayed on one page were considered critical programming skills.

Now, outside of a few rare embedded or game engine jobs, nobody seems to give a shit about any of this. It's just "glue these APIs and libraries together and ship the resulting crap as soon as it barely runs." Nobody cares about the size of the resulting executable. Nobody cares about or even knows their code's runtime heap footprint. Nobody cares or even measures how many cache misses they're encountering. I feel like an old grandpa even typing this stuff out.

The worst part is that end users are the ones that end up losing. It's their system resources that are ultimately being wasted.

Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple

#150

Post by qup »

newswasboring wrote: post #147
ArcMex wrote: post #132

>Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? Yes, absolutely!

I've reached a age where I have to answer "define young". Early thirties is weird. All the people I respect and learn from are still older than me, but not old old.

I'm older than you and I actually considered that the author was talking about me! I thought "yeah, I'm an addict, we're still out there".

It didn't occur to me that I was old until your comment. Thanks!

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