151–160 of 209 posts
The only example given being Alan Turing cracking Enigma is that right? Also yes being a worker sucks.
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…
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…
Right, but that wasn't what the OP was talking about. In fact the issues they were concerned about were pretty much orthogonal to that. You're trying to make their complaint sound lame and pollyannaish, but really it wasn't.
> 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…
I'm a software engineer at a large construction company and find my work deeply meaningful. We make sure people building actual stuff stay safe with our tools, and work more efficiently. It's so cool to see mind blowing, tangible projects get built. You're right, FAANG comp is definitely way higher, but I really enjoy where I work and it's the first place in a long time I haven't felt an urge to start looking for som…
And if the management is seeing your work and appreciates it, that's pretty much a dream job. Good for you.
The thing that's killed it for me is scrum, even though I'm also a 'scrum master'. Or maybe because of that.
I have similar feelings with leetcode. I love software engineering, but leetcode makes me hate software engineering. I just want to build cool stuff. I don't want to implement LRU cache and another leetcode medium-hard in under 40 mins from memory.
Welcome to post-capitalism. We’re no longer in the realm of free markets for goods and services. We now make up new markets and deal in abstract commodities such as attention and relationships. The need we are building things for is capital: profits over people. It’s not all bad though. “The industry,” is a big place. There are companies out there that might share a good number of your values. Unless you’re in a cert…
It's also hard to sustain a career in this environment alone for long periods of time. Consider your relationships as your most important asset. And consider organizing.
Differences can be made. Programming computers won't get you there. It will take some changes to the social environment around you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Governments are often sort termist too. For politicians next year's election is often what matters. They also have layers of management, in some countries they are frequently moved around so the long term (from any given manager's point of view) is someone else's problem. From what I know academics in computing fields tend to write high quality software. Not all not Donald Knuth level, but they seem to mostly care ab…
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…
> first try to make it work to spec In my professional experience, the only spec you get is a wishlist, never quantified, always vague. Half the work is figuring out what the customer wants. The only metric that anyone cares about is speed. You need to go fast, but to where? There is no consensus.
So it's a conflict of names, a matter of proper identification.