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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

#271

Post by Ensorceled »

brabel wrote: post #121
lastangryman wrote: post #102

I find it surprising (in a good way) the author could be a programmer for 26 years at Apple. A lot of corporate places I've worked at are always pushing you to progress in to leadership positions; if you aren't moving upwards then you are "managed out" which I always find really sad, the idea that simply being good at your job is now no longer enough. Good on Apple if they don't follow this type of thinking.

An experienced programmer may not be able to write a lot of code faster than an intermediate programmer, but will know to NOT write code or waste time on things they know (from experience) are not required, or desirable... and focus on those things that really matter. This is worth so much for a company. Developers in the middle of their careers are dangerous: they can achieve a lot, but they can easily veer off on a…

> I can see how others often go in undesired directions if not guided back to focus on what is important.

This is the role of the senior engineer in a nutshell: herding the cats, but from the technical side.

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

#272

Post by nawgz »

tambourine_man wrote: post #188
nawgz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I don't think you should try to generalize your emotions - "withdrawal" symptoms on vacation could easily just be your stressed out body finally resting, or one of many other emotions. None of what you have said tracks for me. I can shut off work in a minute and I feel glorious when I do it; it's purely a practical thing. I will stop the minute I can, which I seem to be about 30% of the way to

Not generalizing my emotions, there’s even a term for it: workaholic. It’s a thing. You may not experience it, but your “I can stop whenever I want” kind of phrase doesn’t help you make your point.

This whole conversation is a ridiculous stretch - you just misquoted me to imply I’m a workaholic, and implied everyone else is too. Enough.

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

#273

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #233
vjk800 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets very difficult. I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the problems at home, etc. when they…

Hmm, interesting. I'm 39 and used to have amazing flow sessions in late 20s and early 30s but not seeing them much anymore. I can't tell if it's because of stresses of life or simply because I don't have enough time (with 3 young kids) to allow myself to fall into a state of flow. I really hope it's not stresses or my brain changing because I really valued those periods of focus.

I don't think it's time, it's priorities; your work is, naturally, a lower priority (both in terms of your focus and your actual time) than your kids, spouse (if any) and yourself. Whereas in the Before Times, it was just you and your keyboard.

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

#275

Post by Cthulhu_ »

arvinsim wrote: post #218
victor9000 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the same path and came to the same realization, yet my current architect role is still nothing but meetings. Ugh.

Me, on the other hand, long to be an architect so that I can influence some technical decisions. Grass is always greener.

You hope you can influence some technical decisions, but it's not just a title of architect that gives you authority, you need convincing and communication skills as well.

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

#276

Post by JeremyNT »

imdsm wrote: post #226
asdfman123 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is middle ground though. I love to code and am doing this job for that reason, but there’s a lot of other things I want to do while I’m alive, too. When I’m done coding all day I want to do other things like exercise, climb mountains, learn instruments, etc. My motivation to do other things isn’t due to a lack of curiosity, but curiosity channeled into other activities.

And that's understandable. What John was saying and many of us here echo is that, for us, we'd like to want do the other things, but programming (outside of the commercial grind) is sweeter than all those things. To be consumed by (personal) work, working late into the night only to wake up and continue, uninterrupted and enjoying the bliss of focus, well, it can't be beaten. There's nothing like it. > Programming is…

That's interesting to me. Personally, I feel like you can apply the same mindset to a lot of other activities, which makes them satisfying in the same "way" that programming is.

Putting things in neat little boxes, solving little puzzles... it's kind of hard to describe, but at least personally there are other things that give me the same sense of satisfaction.

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

#277

Post by Cthulhu_ »

cutler wrote: post #274

Interesting that the OP reverted to C after playing with JS and Python. Maybe having to do everything manually at the lowest level maximises focus, assuming you have the time and patience.

It's less magic, I think; I'm working in React right now and it's its own paradigm, separate yet from just JS or C or whatever.

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

#278

Post by neilv »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #233
vjk800 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets very difficult. I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the problems at home, etc. when they…

Hmm, interesting. I'm 39 and used to have amazing flow sessions in late 20s and early 30s but not seeing them much anymore. I can't tell if it's because of stresses of life or simply because I don't have enough time (with 3 young kids) to allow myself to fall into a state of flow. I really hope it's not stresses or my brain changing because I really valued those periods of focus.

Have you tried going back to the theory of Flow, and the conditions for it to happen, and compare&contrast your current situation with earlier ones?

I suppose that the differences might be subtle. For one example, for the condition that you have a sense of doing a good job, your metric for good job might have changed: it might no longer be simply make an algorithm to do X, but include larger context, including the reason X is being done.

BTW, keeping in mind that techbro ageism is a thing, especially in YC-type circles (that's how YC started), I suppose that HN comments by over-30 people can be fodder for confirmation bias by 20yos.

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

#279

Post by hugatest »

visarga wrote: post #235
hugatest wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is that necessary knowledge? Don't get me wrong, once you go down to embedded you sometimes do need to know and sometimes it just improves your understanding (and it's kinda cool anyway), but if you do high-level work, perhaps web work, all you need to know is the abstract interface of floats as a data type. What operations you can do, what is guaranteed about the result of those operations (loss of precision…

Maybe not everyone needs to know, but for example it's important to know about it in ML. You can have overflow, underflow, non-deterministic addition when parallelised, or just need to speed up your network.

Right. You can know these abstract properties though without knowing how a float is actually represented in memory.

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

#280

Post by dfox »

hugatest wrote: post #225
visarga wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have known programmers who don't know how a float is represented in memory. I just can't comprehend how they can gloss over basics like that.

And why is that necessary knowledge? Don't get me wrong, once you go down to embedded you sometimes do need to know and sometimes it just improves your understanding (and it's kinda cool anyway), but if you do high-level work, perhaps web work, all you need to know is the abstract interface of floats as a data type. What operations you can do, what is guaranteed about the result of those operations (loss of precision…

Because not caring how FP values are stored and what the implications are (or even not realising that you favorite programming language uses FP by default) is a particularly fast way to become the "minus 10 times programmer".

Storing monetary values as FP is one thing, but I've seen phone numbers and other numeric identifiers (long time ago before PCI-DSS even credit card numbers) stored as FP values, with predictable results.

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