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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

#301

Post by wing-_-nuts »

haspok wrote: post #198
bboygravity wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another simple trick if you don't like saying "no": become a freelancer. It will never ever occur to anybody in the company that a freelance software dev could possibly be put into a management role, so they won't ask. As opposed to an employed software dev. Bonus if you're in the EU/UK: in most countries in the EU this will even lead to tax breaks and higher before-tax hourly rates. To the point that you'll make (wa…

> It will never ever occur to anybody in the company that a freelance software dev could possibly be put into a management role... If by "freelancer" you mean "contractor", then this statement is false. I had worked at multiple places in the UK where this happened, I suppose mostly because paying these people a salary would have required an disproportionate amount of money (as opposed to a standard daily rate) - UK t…

>TDD being a typical example

Shots fired! I love tests, but I mostly agree with you. The whole idea of 'write your tests first' is great if everything is precisely defined. I find it odd I haven't seen more pragmatism around unit testing in the blogosphere. It's TDD or death out there.

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

#302

Post by Hunpeter »

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'm 26 (so, born around the time author started at Apple) and took up programming as an on-and-off hobby in my early twenties. I've never worked in IT in any capacity and don't consider myself skilled or talented. But I love the thrill of figuring things out, of building (usually useless) things, of solving problems. I suspect there could be many like me, who perhaps never get into (or even try to get into) the industry, yet are enthusiastic about the field itself.

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

#304

Post by wing-_-nuts »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #232

I've been working with Apple since 1986. I very much have enjoyed their ecosystem, and probably like them, for many of the same reasons that a lot of geeks hate them. It's worked out OK, for me. My first exposure to Apple personnel, were the MacHack conferences, of the late 1980s. Back then, Apple was still pretty "scruffy." Some of the T-shirts that showed up at MacHack are now silk-shirts at Apple. Over the years,…

>They were probably the only company that I would have relocated for, in my fifties.

I'm always curious about people's willingness to uproot their lives, and move away from family and friends for a job. Especially at older ages where one has 'made it' and money is no longer the top priority.

There's only one organization that's on that list for me, and that's JPL, especially if I got a chance to work on their sat / rover stuff.

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

#305

Post by pfannkuchen »

kstenerud wrote: post #142

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…

Do you feel that managing helped you in some ways with your later IC work or was it a waste of time?

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

#306

Post by saiya-jin »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #273
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having family as priority compared to work is more than fine, it makes you (potentially, not necessarily) a good human being, a good parent or husband. This world needs that 10'000x more than another code ninja optimizing some corporation by nanofraction of a percentile.

The opposite is extremely valid too (to not leave any room for misunderstanding - folks prioritizing work over their kids are shitbags, no exception, and every single one I've met in their later years deeply regret that... apart from outright sociopaths and similar careless crowd).

Focus on career if thats your calling and spent whole live in it if you want, but then please don't have kids. Every kid with missing/bad father figure I've ever met later in their lives was a mess in one of myriad ways, endlessly compensating for this and never actually coming over it, permanently. If you know what to look for, you can start seeing it around you quite easily. It breaks my heart a little every time I see it. These folks often repeat same mistakes of their parents too.

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

#307

Post by neilv »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #298
neilv wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

>BTW, keeping in mind that techbro ageism is a thing, especially in YC-type circles (that's how YC started) Can you elaborate on 'that's how YC started'?

As PG was getting into angel investing, he started by soliciting ~20yos to be founders, and wrote about his reasoning for that.

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

#308

Post by godshatter »

stavros wrote: post #196
Charlie_Black wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best engineers I know all started coding for fun too. Not to build "real-life" usable software, but to solve algorithmic puzzles.

My fun is building real-life usable software and seeing people getting value out of them, so I guess YMMV. I'm very lucky that I really like doing this, as it makes work as fun as my hobby, and my personal portfolio has a bunch of finished (if generally small) products in it.

I enjoy this too, but predicting who is going to like what exactly is still a mystery to me. Programs I built that I think are the most beautiful and useful thing around get ignored or just tolerated and some silly bash script or Word macro I wrote in five minutes as a one-off for someone has been passed around multiple times and is still in use 20 years later.

Where I get my fun is that I live to increase my understanding of something. This code should be doing "this", but it's doing "that" instead. Is there something I'm missing in my basic understanding of this particular topic? When I follow it through and get that "Ahh, I get it!" moment, it's like a drug for me. All is suddenly right with the world again. It's why I gravitate to lower level languages and languages that give me more control.

The rest is building scaffolding and applying standard recipes and carefully laying things out as I go. I still enjoy it, but I don't get the happiness that I get from getting one of those "aha!" moments. Or being told my stupid Word macro saved someone hours of work in some random meeting somewhere, I guess.

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

#309

Post by wing-_-nuts »

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…

'System' languages like c / c++ / rust are a natural fit for hobby programming because you're writing something to run on your machine, to scratch your particular itch. All the better if that language is able to run on a little microcontroller and move an actuator or what have you.

I say that to contrast with 'application' languages like java, nodejs, or whatever. I'm not saying hobbiest stuff doesn't get written in those but you're a lot less likely to see an OSS spring or react app on someone's github than you're likely to see some cool little command line program that does one small thing.

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

#310

Post by morning-coffee »

theshrike79 wrote: post #219
szundi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what I want more anymore. I love these periods of flow, but I am so good at integrating other people's work, making them agree on the best while being happy and feeling productive. Also flow makes time fly and I feel I would just die very soon, heh. Anyone feeling this too? But I crave this feeling very much anyway.

This is my exact feeling :D I love coding and problem solving, but during my career I noticed that I'm _really_ good at getting technical people to communicate with each other and integrating their work. I try to do both, but I still don't know which I like more. I tried the full manager / chart drawing architect -route and I hated it. Just coding was a bit boring too in the long run, because I want to make an impact…

Just can't help but share: (I Have People Skills!)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcIMIyQnOso]
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