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Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

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Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#91

Post by yodsanklai »

karel-3d wrote: post #33

His parents still want to send him to medical school, because he's Asian, so he needs to be a doctor. (I'm directly quoting him!) That's ... something.

I see several big issues with SWE roles

- it's hard to have a complete career only coding (assuming that you'll still enjoy it at 40-50-60). Ageism is a thing.

- you're extremely dependent on economy. Sure, you can earn $500K+ at FAANG, but you can also get laid off and earn much less. You probably won't earn such high salary for your whole life (see above point)

- SWE not a respected profession. What do you do for a living? I'm a coder VS I'm a doctor.

I'm not saying being a doctor is perfect, it certainly varies. But I feel it's more future proof than SWE. Also it's easy to code as a hobby. Perhaps even more fun than doing it professionally. Another point, in some developed countries, having access to healthcare can be increasingly difficult. If you're in the system, you make it easier for you and your family to get care when you need it.

I hope this guy can do whatever he wants, but I can understand his parents.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#92

Post by smatija »

MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #87
masijo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get a job like that? Sounds pretty good

You'd be surprised how many such jobs are there. Mostly not listed though. If my experience is any guide, one generally starts as a temp / consultant and you slowly expand the role from there. There's generally a point some years later where you're almost "too big to fail". Too many small odd jobs that are needed maybe once a year, but when they happen, they are pretty important.

Important to note that this too big to fail point occurs very quickly in some cases. Non-IT companies are generally very risk/change averse in regards to their IT infrastucture (and for very good reason, see e.g. [1] and [2]). So if you are capable enough to learn their legacy codebase you will be very quickly the only person worldwide capable of maintaining it.

[1] - https://www.cio.com/article/274138/enterprise-resource-plann...

[2] - https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/06/birmingham_erp_budget...

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#93

Post by barosl »

glidergun wrote: post #74
barosl wrote: post #55

I also write code using my phone when I'm on a bus or the subway. It requires some patience but after getting used to it, the experience is surprisingly pleasant especially if you're familiar with terminal-based tools. My environment consists of: - Galaxy S24 Ultra - Termius: I think it is the best terminal emulator and SSH client on Android. The sad thing is that the paid version is a bit too expensive. ($10 per mon…

Try pairing tmux with mosh, it's how I've been working for years whenever I'm forced to admin through a brittle straw. Mosh combats lag pretty well and doesn't care if your connection drops intermittently. https://mosh.org/

I tried Mosh but it didn't fit my taste. It tries to "predict" the state of the screen before being acknowledged by the server, but sometimes the prediction is wrong and Mosh reverts the cursor movement and redraws the affected area of the terminal. For example, when I'm using split windows in Vim or tmux, Mosh allows typed characters to overflow beyond the separator, briefly, until being told "no" by the server. Personally I find this behavior very disturbing. Enduring higher lags was more bearable to me.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#94

Post by barosl »

sharperguy wrote: post #75
barosl wrote: post #55

I also write code using my phone when I'm on a bus or the subway. It requires some patience but after getting used to it, the experience is surprisingly pleasant especially if you're familiar with terminal-based tools. My environment consists of: - Galaxy S24 Ultra - Termius: I think it is the best terminal emulator and SSH client on Android. The sad thing is that the paid version is a bit too expensive. ($10 per mon…

Do you use a special keyboard app too, or just the default one?

Just the default one. I tried some alternative keyboards and they are better in some ways but in the end the default keyboard was enough. Termius provides input of some special keys (e.g. Ctrl, Alt, Esc, Tab, Home, End) so that's another reason why the default keyboard is enough.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#95

Post by Ringz »

pandemic_region wrote: post #26

Back in the 90's, I created something like a mortgage calculator on my HP48gx. It was about 1500 "lines" (a line being maybe at most 30 chars) , all keyed in using only the calculator. The mind is capable of many things.

I wrote a few programs on my HP48GX (which still works perfectly). Programs about Maxwell formulas and Einstein's effects where a little bit more complicated. Not once did I think, "But this is exhausting!". However, I stayed under 1000 lines.

But now, if something gets a little bit more complicated or repetitive in my cozy Neovim environment I think more about how to avoid this with ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf… maybe a restrictive environment is sometimes better to actually build something?

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#96

Post by gessha »

__rito__ wrote: post #64
karel-3d wrote: post #33

His parents still want to send him to medical school, because he's Asian, so he needs to be a doctor. (I'm directly quoting him!) That's ... something.

I have pondered much on such things. Not every developer gets to work on Sora, Quantum AI chip, or CUDA source code. For the very vast majority, it is facing stupid PMs, MBA bosses, daily standups, and getting fired with no fault of your own. There are good sides, too, of course. But you have to live through these. Do you choose these or getting VIP treatment in society with tenured jobs and after MD + 10 YoE, you ca…

Not sure if it’s the people who survive med school or just who’s interested in being a doctor but every medical doctor I know has serious personality flaws that makes them hard to be/live with.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#97

Post by mewpmewp2 »

barosl wrote: post #55

I also write code using my phone when I'm on a bus or the subway. It requires some patience but after getting used to it, the experience is surprisingly pleasant especially if you're familiar with terminal-based tools. My environment consists of: - Galaxy S24 Ultra - Termius: I think it is the best terminal emulator and SSH client on Android. The sad thing is that the paid version is a bit too expensive. ($10 per mon…

I wish I could do it. I find even just texting annoying. Also Galaxy phone. I wonder if my fingers may just be too fat. Although I don't think they are. Actually I hate doing most things through a phone, and e.g. if a food delivery app has a desktop version I will always use that given the chance.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#98

Post by mewpmewp2 »

ksynwa wrote: post #2

I'm getting a little bit of anxiety just reading about this. I hate typing on phone especially if the text haa symbols mixed in. I mistype a lot more often on phone and often somehow skip entire words. (Don't know what the cause of this is.) I am guessing they using some specialised keyboard that makes it easier to type symbols etc.

Same observation. I don't know how or why, but I seemingly words, and I absolutely have to reread what I wrote, and usually do updates after that. And every time I'm surprised by how bad mistakes I made.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#100

Post by skydhash »

wslh wrote: post #63

Genuinely speaking, are there UX/UI/CHI innovations about developing software on small screens? I think it go both ways: it is not only about the form-factor but rather programming languages and UIs specifically adapted. For example, it is not the same to develop in C++ that using Python or LISP.

Something like uiua [0] could be workable, especially with the virtual keyboard. I can probably see images based environments (common lisp, smalltalk) wokring too due to the interactive nature of live programming.

[0]: https://www.uiua.org/

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