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I love programming but I hate the programming industry

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Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#71

Post by PUSH_AX »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

Corporate? I think ultimately we’re talking about any business here. And a business doesn’t exist to facilitate engineers to go back and forth on a PR for a week, or to fantasise about abstractions all day.

The entire problem is the vast majority of engineers have an inability to recognise the business function of their output. They live in their own worlds with tunnel vision on minutia. I can’t pin point when this happened but engineering is a complete circus in most companies.

The horrifying thing is there is buy in at senior management, like the engineers have convinced everyone that it should take weeks to deliver some trivial feature, because God forbid they don’t deliver it by using every dogmatic and koolaid driven process they’ve picked up from others over the years.

You work for a business that’s trying to make money, not a software engineering sandbox charity. Of course there needs to be some balance, but boy is it skewed one way for most right now.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#72

Post by BroomOfSYS »

> This is what I really want to do ...

This is an incredibly selfish and childish demand. Except of doing the really hard work of finding and CREATING meaning in your everyday life by understanding the problems of other people you want to re-enact with the benefit of hindsight the people that did this successfully in the past. Most people in your corporate job actually are making the same mistake as you, maybe it is time you wise up and call them out on it. Before you can do this at least admit to yourself that you don’t know what to do next either.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#73

Post by msephton »

thn-gap wrote: post #18
msephton wrote: post #3

Solution: go independent, work on your own ideas, and sell them to consumers. That might be your own start-up, but for me it was to become an indie game developer. One of my games, YOYOZO, was featured in Ars Technica's "Best Video Games of 2023" so I feel my decision was the right one.

How did you do this transition? How did you feel about your decision before your game was featured? I've been thinking about this path, but I feel too hesitant to jump.

Basically, lockdown project.

I made the decision in early 2020, shortly the first C-19 lockdown happened in the United Kingdom. I had extra time every day given that my usual routines, childcare, etc were disrupted. And I had a Playdate developer preview unit. I switched from web and app development to purely games. I'd previously made games but only occasionally, as a hobby. Though I do live and breathe classic video games.

During lockdown I created many prototypes and a couple of them showed enough promise to become full games. That was the point I went all-in and I haven't looked back. It took time for the device to launch, but again largely coinciding with C-19 restrictions. Through itch and Playdate's Catalog store I make enough money for my modest way of life, so I'm happy. Life gets in the way occasionally, but I keep pushing forward.

The accolade was a complete surprise and very encouraging.

I wrote a bit about my past year https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/03/07/a-year-in-the-lif...

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#74

Post by megadog3 »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #41
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

I think “industry” strongly implies “corporate world”. However > The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. Guess I’m the corporate world then! Listen here, dear colleagues: Before attempting any finesse, abstraction, wit or beauty, maybe first try to make it work to spec. Because otherwise it is entirely worthless . If you are reasonably good at making it work, you…

Counterpoint: The MVP is usually what ends up in production. If your code is a heap of garbage but chocolate-coated on the outside, you're gonna impress management and they'll want to push it live asap. Then the issues start exploding.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#75

Post by donatj »

We were for a time a small company, and we broke off to become an even smaller company. I had a pretty big (perhaps oversized) say in the way things worked, UI, UX, architecture, and had the power to affect and stop decisions I thought would be bad for the users, etc. Working with our designer was a collaborative process.

We got bought out by a much bigger company a number of years ago. The pay is better, but the amount of say I have has slipped away basically to almost nothing.

We just get told what to build and how it should work and look by people with no actual connection to the product. People who frankly have barely used it and just got assigned to design a new feature, and have very little idea how it fits into the bigger picture.

I feel like now I'm only here for my ability to code and not my mind more generally and it's frankly kind of soul crushing.

I've considered leaving, but I'm getting old and a well paying job is a trap, doubly so when you now have kids.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#76

Post by geraldwhen »

bumby wrote: post #60
graemep wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you aren’t moving the needle economically for the company, you’re a liability. I would add, moving the needle in the short term. A business taking a long term view would care more about quality (reliability, security maintainability).

Wouldn’t you think this would mean government-made code would be of higher quality (in theory, and ignoring when govt code is made by private contractors)? It seems to be the opposite

Not all developers are equal. Government work pays a third or less what private industry pays. You’re never going to get extreme competence from a government software employee.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#77

Post by pyrale »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

> the bottom line is if you aren’t moving the needle economically for the company, you’re a liability.

That's fine. The issue comes when you fail to explain how stuff like keeping recent versions of your software or taking some time to fix (at least some of) the bugs moves the needle to people that would never fly a plane that doesn't receive maintenance.

The issue, in economic terms, is that a significant share of our industry's sponsors are the kind of clients that make a market for lemons.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#78

Post by p0nce »

pydry wrote: post #64
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

It's not just the corporate world, it's capitalism in general. I could point out a million people who have made rhyming criticisms of this type before programming even existed. Until those criticisms are met with widespread solid agreement instead of outright hostility or even a resigned "well, it's better than all the alternatives" then nothing will change. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive seen programmers…

Reading Harry Braverman suitably explains a lot of what is going in programming.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#79

Post by stavros »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #35
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

Hope it's okay to self-plug here (seems highly relevant): what you say is a big reason why I organize the Handmade conferences for a living and why they're free of sponsors [0]. An implicit goal is to grow popular enough to the point that enough programmers collectively agree they should have a say in the "corporate world," such as demanding that we slow down "pumping out" new features and make greater investments in…

This looks interesting, but why is 75% of your landing page your bios? When clicking the link, I definitely didn't have in mind "I wonder who founded this and what their background is". I now know a lot about who organizes this and what their reasons are, but I don't know anything about what it is.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#80

Post by cranberryturkey »

megadog3 wrote: post #74
fuzzy2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “industry” strongly implies “corporate world”. However > The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. Guess I’m the corporate world then! Listen here, dear colleagues: Before attempting any finesse, abstraction, wit or beauty, maybe first try to make it work to spec. Because otherwise it is entirely worthless . If you are reasonably good at making it work, you…

Counterpoint: The MVP is usually what ends up in production. If your code is a heap of garbage but chocolate-coated on the outside, you're gonna impress management and they'll want to push it live asap. Then the issues start exploding.

yes, a shitty foundation leads to shitty feature implementation. I've seen this everywhere from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Nobody cares about code quality, except maybe the one self-annointed gatekeeper who thinks he's making a difference and shitting on everyone's PRs delaying features. Get rid of that guy he serves no purpose
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