141–150 of 209 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
One way may be to mentally separate the two kinds of programming. At work, code for the org. After work, code for craft.
Seeing a lot of agreement here, so I thought I’d post to say that I don’t agree with much of this. I don’t think the problem is “industry”, and I think open source is often similar. I wrote a short series of blog posts a while ago (in need of revision, but good enough for now…) about decisionmaking in software: https://prog.blog/essays/decisions/ The upshot is that decisions in software are creative products—there is…
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've been a developer for 30+ years and unfortunately there's not a lot in the OP that I can disagree with. I wish I could. Young people get told that building tech and software is a creative endeavour where they can apply their innate passion. Certain kinds of minds get attracted to work that is based on symbols and abstraction and repetitive activities. Years pass and the shareholders get fat. The truth is that sof…
> almost all of us are hacking code out of the code-face merely to enrich other people Colloquially known as "work". The thing we all do in order to have nice things and a society. > to enrich other people: the people with the corner offices, and the people above them with the yachts Good! That would mean the thing I produced had value . I hope everything I create has value. One day I hope that I've practiced enough,…
I dunno man, but you're clearly a believer. I hope it sustains you over the long-term.
You won't be paid that much, your employment situation will usually be unstable and you'll have to do some boring bureaucracy like beg for funding and play politics, and will likely have/get to teach.
But you'll get to do more or less whateber you want, or at the very least get to decide how to do it. Most projects are greenfield and they work well enough when they work for your purposes. The programming is about the problems, not making yet another CRUD. What you do probably doesn't have much effect on anything beyound your small bubble of collagues, but at least it's usually not actively harmful to society in the way a lot of industry is. You can mostly say and think whatever you want without corporate gagging.
I made the switch almost 20 years ago and I'm very glad I did.
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…
I live by three steps when writing software: 1. Get it working. 2. Get it working well. 3. Get it working fast. Your last sentence reminded me of that.
A tip for those who still have the chance to change careers and want to do programming instead of whatever it is that done in vast majority of industry: switch to academia. You won't be paid that much, your employment situation will usually be unstable and you'll have to do some boring bureaucracy like beg for funding and play politics, and will likely have/get to teach. But you'll get to do more or less whateber you…