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We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
61–70 of 276 posts
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude on HN was describing the other day how they’re moving to use an AI to generate a list of cars with specific features in their inventory and how this was a great part of the AI future. But as we see frequently even on the most sophisticated AIs, they get shit wrong… a lot. So this company decided to replace an actually working, guaranteed to produce proper results filtering system with a guaranteed to not produce…
People don't want buzzwords, people want promotions, bonuses, and recognition. It turns out that producing working software is not the optimal way to obtain those things at a lot of companies.
And how do you get said promotions, bonuses and recognition? By introducing change. And what change is easiest? One that relies on established ground of buzzwords.
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#63There’s no way I’m 80% efficient.
Technically even a perfect engine can not be 100% efficient, so is all good!
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#64Those are rookie numbers. With a little Kubernetes, we can get them way up. So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end for software engineers and managers. No wonder so much stuff is broken and slow. Call me cynical, but from a dollars point of view this seems to be what customers want.
> Call me cynical, but from a dollars point of view this seems to be what customers want.
I'm right there with you, except I don't give "customers" that much credit.
Most people left to their own devices (ie, not brainwashed by marketing) will just stick with "good enough." But it's less fun (and less profitable) to fix and maintain old code, so companies induce "demand" by marketing. And if you're a company who decides to do the adult thing and not play that game, you'll be creamed by the ones that do.
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#65As a devops engineer, 100% of my time is wasted on computer problems. I increase my efficiency further by following instructions to the letter: this allows me to also waste multiple 10s of %s of other people's time too. The 10x programmer is real.
As a mathematician turned software engineer, dev ops and build systems are the bane of my existence. Every time I need to do that work, I want to quit.
The fact that I “can’t just X” but need to use some convoluted build system with details hidden somewhere as if it was arcane magic is beyond me.
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#66Finally, a chance to say what I really think about computers! I feel that the majority of time working with computers is not actually computing numbers (addition, subtraction, multiplication) but LOGISTICS. Logging into systems, Moving data around in memory and between servers, into registers for a function call, to and from a REST API, installing packages, finding dependencies, chaining together library functions.
Your thinking reminds me of the work of a friend of mine. He's an AWS consultant and builds thing like AWS thinks you should. Some of the things he comes up with, chaining services together, with a sprinkle of lambda functions, it's Rube Goldberg machines all the way down.
A user logs in to a javascript app, hosted in an S3 bucket, authentication is handled by Cognito, the user gets a upload form, once their files is uploaded to S3, a lambda triggers an ECS container to spin up, some processing, output is sent to SQS where a service hosted on EKS picks up the processed data .... AND SO ON.
Rube Goldberg machines, all of it.
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#67When I started as an IT manager at a small events firm in 1997, I had 40 hours of work every week, just keeping things alive. By the end in 2013, things just ran smoothly, and I waited for something to break.
Windows got reliable between Windows 97 and Windows 7, servers got reliable, networks got reliable... everything stopped breaking.
There's no way 20% of peoples time is wasted on borked computers, that's a whole day every work week.
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#68Finally, a chance to say what I really think about computers! I feel that the majority of time working with computers is not actually computing numbers (addition, subtraction, multiplication) but LOGISTICS. Logging into systems, Moving data around in memory and between servers, into registers for a function call, to and from a REST API, installing packages, finding dependencies, chaining together library functions.
> I feel that the majority of time working with computers is not actually computing numbers (addition, subtraction, multiplication) but LOGISTICS. I think this was figured out in the 50's, when IBM started making mainframes for businesses - made for data processing and management rather than crunching numbers which was the focus of machines made at universities. Also, in norwegian and I guess other european languages…
In Dutch the word is "computer" also, but English is the bastard child between Dutch and French while Dutch is already a bit of a bastard child from German.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#69Those are rookie numbers. With a little Kubernetes, we can get them way up. So much of the incentive structure in software companies is to ship new features. Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end for software engineers and managers. No wonder so much stuff is broken and slow. Call me cynical, but from a dollars point of view this seems to be what customers want.
>Maintaining existing ones or fixing bugs is a career dead end for software engineers and managers
Strong disagree. This may be the case at certain "tech" companies, but I grew my career into CTO through maintaining existing systems and fixing bugs (and through doing the things no one else wanted to do). Amongst my fellow members of the particular CTO club I'm in, I'd say about 1/4 to 1/3rd followed a similar path.
There is a related way you can limit your career though, by becoming an expert on a non-critical system and limiting your focus solely to it. Many engineers take that path because it feels safe and offers job security, but it will limit upward mobility options.
Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study
#70Finally, a chance to say what I really think about computers! I feel that the majority of time working with computers is not actually computing numbers (addition, subtraction, multiplication) but LOGISTICS. Logging into systems, Moving data around in memory and between servers, into registers for a function call, to and from a REST API, installing packages, finding dependencies, chaining together library functions.
100% this. I always dabbled as a dev since becoming fascinated with coding and computing as a kid in the 90s.
Went into a career in audio engineering in my 20s and switched to development about 4 years ago.
People ask how I found the switch and the truth is that it was very simple. The main principle of audio engineering is ‘signal’ flow, replace the word ‘signal’ with ‘data’ and you’re like 90% of the way there.
Follow the data, all we are doing is moving it around and manipulating it here and there. No different to a raw stem from the DI of a guitar passing through a big old analogue console.