I was feeling a bit this way, but ever since going independent and working on my own startups/open source projects, I don't feel that way. It's a lot more stressful and inconsistent, but the work is more interesting. I think modern AI tools help with a lot of the tedium of gluing APIs together and things like that.
Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#121. It has bever been an art. It had always been just a mean to an end, a job.
2. If you’re in a big company that is the part of the game. By design. Want to xcitement - join a startup.
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#13Sounds like a problem provincial to the domain you're working. Sounds like enterprise microservices and webapps?
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#14it's funny how we keep solving the same problems over and over. While we have these great frameworks why is it so hard to make a product that has desktop, web, mobile and tablet options. If anything development seems slower and more costly now then 10 years ago.
JWZ calls it CADT [1].
The solutions are getting worse and worse.
Also, Dan Luu[2].
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#15it's funny how we keep solving the same problems over and over. While we have these great frameworks why is it so hard to make a product that has desktop, web, mobile and tablet options. If anything development seems slower and more costly now then 10 years ago.
There is no money for the employees in consolidation and boring tech.
Outside of the US, career driven development (CDD) might be needed to get your salary to a level you can say ... have a family. Or for some ... afford rent. Therefore my salary is dependent on me not understanding development Zen!
Then with an army of CDDs there is a tide that is hard to swim against.
Making it worse is how we interview people and any heroics you did at the last job are worth 0c but ability to talk about GraphQL and advanced TS and AWS are worth, dunno, $20k.
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#16You've described my job, but I've found some excitement in the "distributed systems" part of it. It's not trivial to make the right design decisions to make a microservices architecture run well. If it was trivial, we wouldn't have so many problems at work.
That said, I do kind of miss the programming itself being interesting. I did more difficult programming at university.
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#17Never look to your job for fulfillment in the art. There are very few situations where you can create art at your job. That’s what our free time is for, if you care enough to.
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#18You're not wrong
In my experience if you want interesting work you need to seek out a more niche domain like systems programming, graphics, computer vision, audio, embedded, AI, GPU programming, robotics, gamedev, etc...
Something that hasn't been streamlined/optimized to death by 1000 other developers
Otherwise its just wiring together APIs, shuffling data around, and wrangling deployments/infra.
Re: Ask HN: Is software engineering just patching APIs and wrangling Kubernetes?
#19it's funny how we keep solving the same problems over and over. While we have these great frameworks why is it so hard to make a product that has desktop, web, mobile and tablet options. If anything development seems slower and more costly now then 10 years ago.
JWZ calls it CADT [1]. The solutions are getting worse and worse. Also, Dan Luu[2]. [1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html [2] https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
Obligatory reminder that you have to copy and paste the JWZ link in a new window. If you click the link, your browser sends HN referrers, and you get a landing page with a mildly offensive image.