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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

#321

Post by bfrog »

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…

C++ is such a damn chore. This is partly why, everyone always assumes they can do it better, they don't trust any other code, so you end up with monoliths of NIMBY code and esoteric build setups. Code reviews are incredibly painful for the same sort of C++ reasons, everything can effect everything, the whole idea of encapsulation tends to fall apart when memory, time, ordering behavioral effects get relied on after some amount of time usage. Every change is a footgun to be found in production under just the right circumstances.

Hard to be productive when you can't trust the language, the tools, or other developers to be correct.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#322

Post by junon »

sneak wrote: post #301
junon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you don't have other aspirations in life. My day job is solely to fund my personal projects that I actually enjoy. Not everyone is out to be insanely rich.

If you fairly profit from your direct efforts in a lifelong career as a productive programmer, you will merely become rich, not insanely so. You appear to have constructed a strawman. Making someone else rich is the objection.

No, perhaps I was too subtle. My point is I don't care about the fact I might be making someone else rich. Life isn't about coming out ahead of everyone else you interact with. Some people simultaneously understand your point, and also don't care about it. Only within your own subjective opinion do you think they must.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#323

Post by nus07 »

surprisetalk wrote: post #240
taude wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with you. I don't understand the point of this article other than some sort of tongue and cheek snobbery. Hope it maybe made the OP feel better about themselves.

Author here! For context, I recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to coast in large companies. [0] https://taylor.town/corporate-camouflage That got me thinking about what happens when people, especially engineers, coast too much, or fail to plan out their careers. I know plenty of smart people that are enchanted by comfort, then chain themselves to companies that take advantage of them. If you've developed t…

I will not call it snobbery but a difference in generational culture. I am assuming you are below the age of 45 and came into the industry where jobs were aplenty , super low interest rates and the industry was rapidly innovating and risk taking is encouraged . For a lot of folks from the Office Space days of 80s and 90s that wasn’t necessarily the case . Tech jobs were limited and you probably had to post or submit a paper version of your resume. I would encourage you to take a look at JavaScript code from 2003 or a Java codebase from then and see how dreary and different the tech industry was back then . As for transferable skills there is a reason IT workers were stereotyped as autistic nerds before the brash,well rounded, rock climbing risk takers came in. Culture, risk, opportunities and interest rates had to do a lot .

Edit- I was probably like Arthur Westbrook when I was working on a visa and had a family to support . As soon as I got my greencard my appetite for risk taking increased and showing my transferable skills increased . Situational context .

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#324

Post by enlyth »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #217
bayindirh wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. I found out that just being better than yourself takes you a long long way. I have never competed, but just did my thing. Then found out that I've already know more and ahead of many people I'm inspired by. Yet, this was not my aim, and still is not. I'm just one of the so-called dark developers. I just do my thing, try to do it better every time, and don't care…

I recently put a little modal on my phone that just says "Compete against yourself" every 30 minutes, and I'm finding it remarkably helpful at focusing my efforts back to what I want to see in the world. I like the mindset of trying to be just a little better than you were, every day. It feels... correctly scaled, somehow.

You willingly turned on a notification every 30 minutes that tells you to compete against yourself? I cannot tell if this is parody or just Peak HN

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#325

Post by derealized »

bayindirh wrote: post #206
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #139

There are talented people everywhere, the probability of somehow being ground breaking and world impactful is ridiculously small. Anyone pegging their self-worth on that goal is setting themselves up for a lot of mental health struggles. My levels of ambition and relentlessness absolutely shifted after having kids, I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. Now I am very much "fuck you pay me" and my prior…

> I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. I found out that just being better than yourself takes you a long long way. I have never competed, but just did my thing. Then found out that I've already know more and ahead of many people I'm inspired by. Yet, this was not my aim, and still is not. I'm just one of the so-called dark developers. I just do my thing, try to do it better every time, and don't care…

> I found out that just being better than yourself takes you a long long way.

That resonates with me.

There is a saying where I'm from that says "most people are just kicking dirt" that basically means people are doing the bare minimum or don't care at all, and if you just do your thing and really care about your stuff, you're already ahead of the majority.

Being anxious all the time, I use that saying in the opposite way though: just relax and do your thing... you don't need to worry about not having a job, all those other people are barely doing anything and you can't be the best at everytime. Just do your thing are relax.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#326

Post by bjord »

throwaway2990 wrote: post #133
bjord wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you also opposed to higher education/research in anything other than hard science, or do you think people in those fields should just stick to pencil and paper?

Are you suggesting art is crap and that I think it shouldn’t be on the internet because you deem it crap?

actually, no, I'm suggesting that you think art is crap and that thus you also think it shouldn't be on the internet

honestly, I don't think that's a huge leap given your previous comments—am I wrong?

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#327

Post by jmull »

I mean, a lot of people work on things that, despite being billed as a Great New Thing, are throwaway projects that will disappear without a trace in a few years (once management changes, the market turns, or the founders/VCs cash out, or the SEC comes knocking, etc.)

At least a 35yo codebase probably actually does something more useful than sell a narrative whose purpose is to enrich a few random jackasses.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#328

Post by arbitrage »

actionfromafar wrote: post #251
blantonl wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...these OS/2 machines were once interconnected by a networking technology called 'token ring'.. no joke. It was basically an entire network where if one single node on the network misbehaved it would bring down the entire network - they didn't self recover either! you had to reboot them all. I remember once when I misconfigured a token ring card on a PC and it brought down the mainframe! It shut down the bank for 30…

To be fair, in those days you could sink Ethernet (broadcast hubs, no switches!) with a faulty or malicious PC spamming the network, too. Didn’t have to reboot the others, though.

> in those days you could sink Ethernet with a faulty PC

That is still possible in the modern era.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#329

Post by coliveira »

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…

I hope it worked for you, but I don't see any big difference. Web technology will become dated faster than the old C++ codebase. If you learn some web tech stack today I expect that it will be obsolete in 5 to 10 years. What are you gonna do next? Move to another small company for half the salary to learn everything again and compete with 20 year olds?

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#330

Post by lolsal »

duxup wrote: post #310
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #139

There are talented people everywhere, the probability of somehow being ground breaking and world impactful is ridiculously small. Anyone pegging their self-worth on that goal is setting themselves up for a lot of mental health struggles. My levels of ambition and relentlessness absolutely shifted after having kids, I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. Now I am very much "fuck you pay me" and my prior…

Maintenance doesn't get enough respect / glory too. "Arthur" should be highly thought of. Folks writing new code in the wonderfully free world without a ton of odd dependencies and corner cases ... IMO often aren't doing as much "work".

Writing new code with no existing constraints or requirements isn’t some masterful feat of engineering, usually.

Working in an existing code base, on a team with multiple features going in, gathering requirements from stakeholders and negotiating deliverables on a timeline while refactoring is happening, libraries being upgraded and CVEs being fixed - navigating all of that while being a useful, compassionate team member - that’s priceless on a team.

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