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awww, you're so gullible
Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
51–60 of 596 posts
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#52For 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…
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.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can only assume it's because HN is full of young, inexperienced people whose main wish is to stay on the cutting edge of technology rather than sinking into a stable profession
You may be right, but I don't think experience is what makes people prioritize stability over anything else. I'd be so depressed at a real job like the one described, it would be irrelevant that it was stable and gave me extra time. Some people are ambitious, some just like variety.
Variety for the sake of variety is foolish though. If variety is not required, injecting it where it's not needed is just called "breaking things"
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#54For 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 you left a job that paid 2x and exposed you to hard problems that require reliable solutions for a job inside the horror clusterfuck that's the modern web where nothing really "works" and there's no real engineering to speak of besides monkeys throwing crap in a shared pile and shovelling it out the door ASAP.
Good for you I guess?
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#55How did Arthur avoid promotion to management?
They couldn't hire any replacement VB6 programmers.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#56I'm worried this will be me someday. I suppose that's the point.
Does somebody work 35 years in same company, it is usually 2-5 years -> new company grind rather than working at same company.
I've seen it. Some people are weird and just want a stable job that pays them alright so they can focus on their family and other things they care about.
A few times in my career I've seen people with a decade-plus experience leave companies they would have stayed at for another two decades if it were within their control. It's sad. They struggle a bit because they often realise that they've over fit their skillsets to that single company.
One guy I knew was hired as a "web developer" in ~2005 because of his HTML/CSS knowledge. He continued to do basically just HTML/CSS until he lost his job in 2020. Lovely guy, but he saw his job as just a job and couldn't give a damn about learning new technologies. I often wonder what he's doing now... I doubt just knowing HTML/CSS is a hireable skillset anymore.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#57For 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. I'd like to think I've succeeded.
I'm not sure if that's intentional humour or not.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#58Unrelated: this link opened almost instantly, what’s this magic? Even HN takes longer!
If you serve plain static HTML from S3 or Cloudflare Pages (or even a vanilla nginx on a vps) and put a decent CDN in front of it (and don't load 3p resources), it will astound people how fast your page loads. I regularly get this feedback on my own webpage.
It's not rocket science - it's how we made webpages in 2001. Browsers are really good at that.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#59For 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…
And now you are jumping from one "stack" to another, none the wiser, your knowledge hopelessly outdated just a year in. The principles you learned in HFT? Those apply all the same.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#60There is something to be said for stability. Since our protagonist retired early, the pay must not have been bad. The glass is half full, or so I tell myself.
I thought so at first too, but the planned "street performance and dumpster diving" tells a different story.