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Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

taylor.town

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Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#22

Post by bowsamic »

bjord wrote: post #8
throwaway2990 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I don't think it's supposed to be a "real" article about a real person, I think it's art (that speaks to some of our fears) do you believe that something has to be purely "productive" to be deserving of space on the internet?

I think it's quite inspiring rather than invoking fear. I would take a job like this any time.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#24

Post by hliyan »

For ten years, I worked on codebases written in C++ without using any third party libraries (no, not even STL -- we needed faster, thread safe versions of strings and maps which were not available at the time; Boost? What's that?), its own custom messaging middleware built directly on sockets, its on distributed process management system built with unix syscalls (obviously). There was not a single line of HTML, Java etc. anywhere. It was a comfortable, high-paid life and I solved cutting edge problems (HFT, distributed, concurrent computing). In 2013, I forced myself to quit, start with a small company that paid me half the salary so that I could learn the web tech stack from the ground up. It was all to avoid this fate. I'd like to think I've succeeded.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#26

Post by Otek »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #14

Funny, but there's nothing wrong with that if Arthur was/is happy (which isn't mentioned).

Exactly this. Guy had a comfortable stable job for years. Probably knew codebase and technology enough to have lots of time for family/friends/hobbies. More than this story scares me how HN reacted

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#28

Post by zabzonk »

hliyan wrote: post #24

For ten years, I worked on codebases written in C++ without using any third party libraries (no, not even STL -- we needed faster, thread safe versions of strings and maps which were not available at the time; Boost? What's that?), its own custom messaging middleware built directly on sockets, its on distributed process management system built with unix syscalls (obviously). There was not a single line of HTML, Java…

> so that I could learn the web tech stack from the ground up. It was all to avoid this fate

same fate

> I'd like to think I've succeeded.

possibly not

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#30

Post by bowsamic »

hliyan wrote: post #24

For ten years, I worked on codebases written in C++ without using any third party libraries (no, not even STL -- we needed faster, thread safe versions of strings and maps which were not available at the time; Boost? What's that?), its own custom messaging middleware built directly on sockets, its on distributed process management system built with unix syscalls (obviously). There was not a single line of HTML, Java…

What about it would you like to avoid? I don't understand the fears that people have in this thread. To me this sounds like the Platonic ideal of a programming job.

EDIT: I'll reply to my replier here because /u/Dang rate limited me (again), though I must commend him for letting me have one more comment than usual before he pushes the button ;)

> I would say the ending -- the part where you are unemployed and unable to support yourself in your old age because you invested decades of your brainpower into a highly specialised, non-transferrable skill.

I would contend that such a person, unless very reckless with finances or extremely underpaid, should have enough money saved up to make what is mentioned there very unlikely. That said, I know some high-income earners struggle to not blow their entire bank account each month

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