Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase • Hacker News Board

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#451

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #299

baz00 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kids sitting there. All you do is change your EC2 instance size and restart it. Back in my day I had to go and install the RAM by hand. And you know 128Mb of RAM then took up a whole suitcase and weighed more than your laptop The I fall asleep at my desk, periodically waking up shouting "STOP-A!" and hallucinating about being bitten by thick ethernet vampires. Going to make myself a coffin...

"I had to go and install the RAM by hand" When the Sun 4/330 I used to have needed a RAM upgrade someone flew up from London to Edinburgh with the RAM and installed it. Fortunately we were in the Grassmarket about 10 minutes from the Castle so he had plenty of things for him to do to keep him amused until his return flight. Edit: I checked and the max the 4/330 could take was 96MB so I suspect the upgrade was an awes…

I went to the closing sale of a local computer store that had been in business since XT days.

Owner lamented finding 4MB sticks of RAM that had fallen behind the workstations that had cost hundreds of dollars back in the day, as he was selling (and this was a while ago) laptops with 1-2GB of memory).

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#452

Post by throwaway743 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

baz00 wrote: post #192

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... And the AIX machines were a real beast. We had 20 of those things, and each had its own 20 amp circuit. Had a tendency for the grounding to the steel case to fail. If you wanted to upgrade it you'd first need to grab a pair of thick leather gloves...."

You kids sitting there. All you do is change your EC2 instance size and restart it. Back in my day I had to go and install the RAM by hand. And you know 128Mb of RAM then took up a whole suitcase and weighed more than your laptop The I fall asleep at my desk, periodically waking up shouting "STOP-A!" and hallucinating about being bitten by thick ethernet vampires. Going to make myself a coffin...

"Back in my day, we only got one compile a day with our punch cards. Now you can compile willy nilly without having to put in the forethought we did" - ex coworker

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#453

Post by mensetmanusman » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

lolsal wrote: post #389

oytis wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot fully appreciate your moments without kids until you have kids though.

It seems tragic to me that you had to procreate to appreciate your time on earth. I am grateful and thankful for every moment. Life is full of wonder to me without the burden of children.

Appreciation has a range of values. Having kids for many people is like going from black and white to color TV.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#454

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #304

Man spends entire career convincing himself the reason he keeps job hopping is because everyone else is writing crappy code. Karl Hackerman shows up to each meeting complaining. He seems sour that he hasn’t been given the go ahead to rewrite the system in Rust. He knows a lot about bleeding edge frameworks and best practices and always seems annoyed that he can’t use them at work. He thinks it’s because everyone else…

[deleted]

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#455

Post by throwaway2990 » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

bjord wrote: post #326

throwaway2990 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well I guess it depends on what we define as art. I don’t think putting a piece of cheese on a table in the middle of a room is art or thought provoking beyond “this ‘artist’ is fucking shit”. Or running and jumping while drawing a line on the wall. That’s just insulting to actual artists who have talent that we can appreciate.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#456

Post by fullshark » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

This type of cynicism/snark used to be a lot more funny before it dominated all internet discussion and interaction. Maybe the people who spend all their time online are the bitter/angry ones and it just has taken over all discussion?

In any case it's just a job, and anyone harboring illusions otherwise will learn the truth soon enough.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#457

Post by w4termelon » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #141

bboygravity wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question: is this like creating fancy tech that is helping rich people to front-run the poor and middle-class? Because that's what a lot of people think online. Maybe it's more nuanced. I'm curious how someone from that carreer sees it?

The whole business model is misunderstood by your average internet commentator. When you have a market, you need someone to be there to provide liquidity. Imagine if you're a farmer and you show up to the market with your wheat, but all the bakers have gone home that day. Or the baker shows up and there's no farmer. The market maker stands around all day offering to buy and sell so that you don't have to wait for the…

"Your average internet commentator" is ignorant by choice. No argument or description will convince them.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#458

Post by i_am_a_peasant » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

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 also went from dreaming of being the best at 1 thing to "fuck you pay me" in a hilariously short time.

10 years of being underpaid and yet being the most productive guy at work will do that to you.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#459

Post by wonderwonder » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

cochne wrote: post #424

derealized wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're hard not to love. I often search for a clearcut answer to a technical question and I'm met with a 2 hour history lesson into a decade of company politics and failed replatforming projects. Yeah, thanks for telling me why John from accounting was a dick 10 years ago and you had to code this module in a certain way. I really don't care. I'm new to the codebase and I just want to know how it (the codebase) wor…

> I'm new to the codebase and I just want to know how it (the codebase) works. You should want to know _why_ it works that way too if you want to do any meaningful work with it. Context matters. I’ve seen many cases where the way something works seems dumb, only to learn later they had already tried the “smart” way but ran into some obscure problem which the “dumb” way solves.

This is important. As soon as we come to the understanding that the coders that came before were not all idiots then we are forced to ask the "why". There is generally a decent reason why something is coded the way it is. Could be as simple as it was an emergency and meant to go back and fix it but never had the time or it could be a valid business edge case that absolutely had to be wedged in. There is almost always a why. Otherwise you tell everyone about a fix you made that 3x performance and you see their faces go gray as they explain you just shut down some archaic but mandatory process in Singapore.

Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase

#460

Post by hfhfhfhfhfhfhf » Thu, Aug 03, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

I left my previous job because it was obvious this was my future (or would be my future if the company could stay in business, which was unlikely). My mandate was to fix all the problems without changing any of the founder's work that caused the problems. My new job is terrific.