Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by pmarreck » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:08 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #8

tambourine_man wrote: post #2

> What am I trying to say? I have a programming addiction? (Maybe.) I think all of us do, to some degree. You have to to endure hours on end staring at a glowing screen and banging your head against a mechanical keyboard.

I’ve been programming professionally for over 25 years. I have not written a line of code for “fun” since I graduated from college.

This makes me sad.

Do you mean you coded for fun before graduating and not since, or ever?

Like you never coded a little game or a shell function to make your commandline usage easier or anything like that just for your own use, for fun?

Honestly it’s a double edged sword to like coding because then you get opinions about languages.

I could never be a mercenary in anything though. If I didn’t like coding I’d be a destitute individual.

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

#392

Post by nyarlathotep_ » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #149

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…

Absolutely correct.

Not to mention most of my time as a "Developer" is spent managing busted CI/CD pipelines, container crap, whatever cloud-yaml things, fighting broken dependencies/build issues, cargo-culting test suites.

I program way more on weekends/nights on toy/tutorial stuff than I do at work, ironically.

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

#393

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

bazmattaz wrote: post #291

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,…

Sounds like you have had an fascinating career. I dunno, but maybe the world need two types of engineers; ones motivated by good code and ones motivated by money. I wonder though if you can develop a superb product and company with just money alone. In a way you probably need evangelists rather than just hired guns. In my experience as a product manager, the evangelists are much more creative than the hired guns. You…

I’ve always been a fan of heterogeneous teams. They are a challenge to manage, but deliver great results.

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

#394

Post by lucaspfeifer » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:22 AM UTC

digging wrote: post #318

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.

Guilty. I'm pretty good at my job, but I never learned CS fundamentals and don't work in a context where this matters (I currently work in front-end JS/TS). I don't think it's worthless knowledge to me, but I think you're a bit blinded by your own context. I have seen many comments on HN bemoaning "Developers who don't even know X", and X is always something different. I don't think there's a smoking gun for bad deve…

Here's one take: good developers learn fast, bad developers learn slow. Software is one of the fastest moving fields, so it takes a quick mind to keep up. Clearly, everyone needs some basic knowledge to program, and equally clearly, there will be gaps in every developer's knowledge. When needed, we fill the gaps as quickly as possible. If someone can learn 10x as fast, maybe they only need 1/10th the knowledge base.

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

#395

Post by di456 » Tue, May 23, 2023, 1:44 AM UTC

jgraettinger1 wrote: post #293

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.

Also 39, also three young kids. It’s hard. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that my difficultly in getting into a flow state is more often than not because of a subconscious hang-up about the approach that I haven’t articulated yet. I’ve learned to recognize and lean into this, and actively look for what’s bothering me about a design. Usually while doing other things. I suspect it’s actually saved effort overall.

I can relate to this.

Sometimes I have to detangle a bunch of loosely related spaghetti code in my head for long enough to fully grok it and relate it to the business context. And then bring it all back together as one cohesive unit of work. In the end the code is easier to understand and maintain than if I layered on more spaghetti code and called it a day. I've done that too and months later not understood my own code.

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

#396

Post by hgsgm » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:08 AM UTC

samstave wrote: post #333

princevegeta89 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal opinion: After looking at my current manager and previous managers in my previous jobs I decided to never become a manager. Being a manager means that I'll have to fill my day with nothing but meetings I cannot skip, keep talking on and on and on, deal with delivery headaches, respond to requests even while on PTO, do a lot of context switching between Slack, email, calendar, documentation, and other thin…

I made the mistake of entering management WAY too early in my career. I wish I had not. it relegated my time to many tasks other than tech implementation. FN having to train CFOs on financially managing cloud environs, managing people, pestering people for status reports, c-level presentations on this that and the other thing, etc... My biggest mistake in my career was thinking I was "climbing the ladder" when accept…

Were you not climbing ? Was your pay not rising?

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

#397

Post by hgsgm » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:09 AM UTC

szundi wrote: post #178

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…

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.

I don't want to feel like I live longer by enjoying each moment less.

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

#398

Post by kstenerud » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:10 AM UTC

pfannkuchen wrote: post #305

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?

It helped me empathize with my manager more. And that's always a good thing.

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

#399

Post by hgsgm » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:12 AM UTC

andruby wrote: post #193

marktolson wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same path, but for the last 10 years i've been a CTO. Right now i'd kill for fewer meetings and more focus time. Starting to take its toll.

Make the changes you'd love to see. The CTO role is vague and broad and is defined differently in most companies anyway. You can delegate things to an engineering manager or director. Or if the company is large enough to a VP. find a cross-section of what is valuable for the company and what you like doing

I don't think the Eng Dir will enjoy doing the CTO's job for the CTO. In 6 months Eng Dir would be in a meeting with the CEO asking the CEO to fix the glitch.

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

#400

Post by haswell » Tue, May 23, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

vjk800 wrote: post #357

haswell wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I’m somewhere in this comment. For me, the stress and worry about things going on in my life eventually led to full burnout. Those periods of flow were what kept me going, and when I could no longer find them, it only compounded the stress. I ended up going on a self-funded sabbatical to focus on sorting out my personal and internal life, and the #1 change that has led to rediscovering deep focus was star…

> All of this to say, if you are at all similar to me, it might be worth considering the lack of ability to find flow a big red flag worth actively investigating. I don’t know if I could’ve avoided burnout, but I’m sufficiently convinced now that internal work is one of the most important (and accessible) ways of addressing this. Don't you worry, I have plenty of other red flags besides inability to concentrate to ke…

I also had some false starts with meditation and didn’t “get it” until I found good resources on mindfulness/Vipassana.

I used the “Waking Up” app (not free but has a 30 day thing that’ll get you through the introductory course), and it was as if the content was targeted at people who’ve tried and didn’t get it. Mantras are not the focus.

There are many types of meditation, but the kind getting all of the attention in studies (for good reason) is the mindfulness variety.

The reason Yoga suddenly clicked for me was that I brought the mindset from meditation into the Yoga practice. Exercise (cycling and long walks) is always beneficial, but my body awareness increased so drastically with Yoga that I feel like a different person.

That may have more to do with my history of dissociative tendencies, but I do think there’s a connection between a good meditation practice and Yoga becoming something more than just exercise. It becomes an entry to flow.