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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

#91

Post by sokoloff »

badpun wrote: post #70
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 don't think it's "corporate world", but just capitalism. Non-corporate companies often have thinner margins than corporations and thus skimp on "extras" such as quality, craftsmanship etc. even more.

What is a non-corporate company?

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#92

Post by duggan »

lolinder wrote: post #22

> 90% of the time when I read descriptions it is excruciatingly obvious to me that whatever code the chosen candidates will end up writing at this job will be completely removed from any important problem not only humanity, but even any individual human has ever had. Startup culture is shamelessly at the forefront of this industry’s ‘produce more code and ask less questions’ policy. I would suggest that part of the p…

Agreed, there are plenty of small companies out there. Early startups, pre or early product-market-fit, etc. Mostly can't afford to pay large salaries. Need people who are interested and self-motivated. Willing to be flexible in various ways – a lot more is negotiable with small companies.

They aren't going to get in front of your face easily – you'll need to seek them out.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#93

Post by peddling-brink »

bdw5204 wrote: post #52
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…

In my experience, most of the corporate world seems to care more about their aesthetic notions of the Platonic ideal of what code should look like than whether or not it works or whether or not it is efficient. Certainly that's my experience from interviews. Maybe the people who care about business value should be the engineering managers not the people who equate their personal aesthetic preferences with the only ri…

Because code is read more often than written? And clean code is easier to read?

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#94

Post by malermeister »

sokoloff wrote: post #91
badpun wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "corporate world", but just capitalism. Non-corporate companies often have thinner margins than corporations and thus skimp on "extras" such as quality, craftsmanship etc. even more.

What is a non-corporate company?

State-owned companies or worker-owned coops come to mind.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#95

Post by pyrale »

sokoloff wrote: post #82
jackcviers3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying isn't free though. Every front-end application built on Electron or running in a container that duplicates half of the OS stack burns more memory on my computer, forcing earlier upgrades of either the entire machine or RAM with each year that passes. It's free to produce, but the cost of running more copied software always increases.

But that at least allows the consumer to decide the tradeoff. If this Electron app or container costs me more than it’s worth to me, I don’t run it.

> But that at least allows the consumer to decide the tradeoff.

...If they connect the dots.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#96

Post by PUSH_AX »

pyrale wrote: post #89
PUSH_AX wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> The entire problem is the vast majority of engineers have an inability to recognise the business function of their output. Who would have thought this would happens when actual business talks to a business analyst, who talks with a product owner, who talks with the engineer (when a PO proxy didn't manage to squeeze in between them).

I’m sorry but I think it’s cultural, I’ve worked in enough early stage startups where the first engineers are working directly with CXOs, and they’re still firmly living in lala engineering land.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#97

Post by doomslice »

rnewme wrote: post #86
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If quick and dirty gets you 10 shots, while slow and beautiful gets you 1, I’d choose quick & dirty any day.

That's not how you build big important, expensive things, though. It all depends on the context.

Do you know that the big expensive thing is what your customers actually need? Do you actually know what your customers need?

That’s basically the only important context. If you can’t deliver that, it doesn’t matter how well thought through, extensible, or scalable it is.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#98

Post by yaky »

I have had the same thoughts. In my opinion, from the developer's perspective, there are two issues in the industry:

1. Conveyorization of development process. Developers write code, that's it. Most what I have done for the past 6 years was do ticket-based work, constantly moving from project to project. Ironically, at the start of my carreer, I was responsible for an entire internal application (including designing new features, being on-call, and talking to end-users), so I grokked the entire setup and purpose.

2. Self-perpetuating push for constant change for the sake of change. Producer (e.g: tech corporation) releases an update to their product to improve some internal metric or make more money -> Consumer updates their product (or jumps on the hype for next big thing) -> Producer metrics go up -> Repeat. This keeps both Producer's and Consumer's developers employed while providing very marginal benefits. While this is a bit of a strawman, think of how many versions (and names!) Of .NET, or React, Angular, Vue or any other framework there has been over the last 10 years and whether each version improved much.

Combine the two, and, as a developer, you don't know how what you're doing matters, nor why you're doing it at all.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#100

Post by ericjmorey »

rnewme wrote: post #86
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If quick and dirty gets you 10 shots, while slow and beautiful gets you 1, I’d choose quick & dirty any day.

That's not how you build big important, expensive things, though. It all depends on the context.

It seems that the biggest, most important, and most expensive things are built like that.
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