Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

elsewhere.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#31

Post by KellyCriterion »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #24

I only find it to be painful when done for the corporate world... when I go home, even after 7 hours at the office, I find it therapeutic to push to main, not have a CI, not write tests, test in production, commit with one-liners like I'm asking someone if they want a beer, and overall just code any random idea that crosses my mind... even more so now with AI, because now I can get my ideas out there faster, and beli…

Becauuuuseeeeee ...at home you can be "The Duct Tape Programmer" - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/09/23/the-duct-tape-prog...

:-))

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#32

Post by deaton »

The same reason gambling is. No, I'm serious. Theres a psychological phenomenon where things which are reliably positive are less enjoyable (or addictive) than something that is disappointing sometimes and positive other times. Writing software is like that in that things don't work, then they don't work, then they still don't work, then suddenly they do.

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#33

Post by KellyCriterion »

deaton wrote: post #32

The same reason gambling is. No, I'm serious. Theres a psychological phenomenon where things which are reliably positive are less enjoyable (or addictive) than something that is disappointing sometimes and positive other times. Writing software is like that in that things don't work, then they don't work, then they still don't work, then suddenly they do.

What you are describing is more about the frustration tolerance: In SW, you need to have a very high one, while in Gambling the addiction keeps you at the table -this is also some type of frustration tolerance, bot not the one as in a context of learning-new-stuff.

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#34

Post by NichoPaolucci »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #24

I only find it to be painful when done for the corporate world... when I go home, even after 7 hours at the office, I find it therapeutic to push to main, not have a CI, not write tests, test in production, commit with one-liners like I'm asking someone if they want a beer, and overall just code any random idea that crosses my mind... even more so now with AI, because now I can get my ideas out there faster, and beli…

I work at a company where our production system WAS like this for a LOOONG time. No development environment, no tests, no documentation, QA was the end users, etc...

I have done a lot of work to improve the CI/CD, get them a development environment, teach some best-practices, get testing set up, reduce bus factor, all the modernization stuff. Oh, and get them a version control system (that helped a bit).

But man, what a rush it was when the system would go down at 11PM on a Sunday, I got to RDP onto the production machine and modify the production code ON THE MACHINE with a one-line fix and... CTRL+S was the production deployment strategy.

I watched one outage occur in real time when a coworker was showing me something on the production machine and CLICK+DRAGGED a live application directory into another one by mistake. Another outage occurred because someone stupid (me) destroyed the inetpub folder (all the IIS configurations for 95 applications). Cold sweats for an hour at 3AM thinking "this one is reallllly bad" before finding the backup.

I always imagined the tech team as these scrappy fellas running this extremely complex steampunk Rube Goldberg machine that was about to blow... I walked in and they just handed me a nailgun and said "GET TO WORK THIS OL' GAL IS ABOUT TO RUN OFF THE RAILS".

It was the wild west and part of me really misses that (not enough to go back though).

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#35

Post by DenisM »

tombert wrote: post #11
skydhash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I derive zero enjoyment from Kubernetes configs, or Terraform, or fucking around with log settings, or screwing around with all the knobs for Kafka. That stuff is agonizing. The click for me was thinking in terms of outcomes and system dynamics. So I make sure to get a good understanding of the final state. Tweaking without a goal is just playing around, or joyless work if you do not enjoy the process.

I suppose. I guess programming to me was always an excuse to do math, not necessarily to build products.

How do you know what you built is good? That was the pivot for me - I defined it for myself as it’s something that makes a positive contribution to my users.

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#37

Post by NichoPaolucci »

tombert wrote: post #7
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I never found programming agonizing.

I mostly find programming fun, I’ve been doing it most of my life, but I will admit that engineering can be pretty agonizing. I enjoy the stuff, I enjoy the algorithmic stuff, and I enjoy implementing the math and algorithms, but that’s only about half of any programming job I have had. I derive zero enjoyment from Kubernetes configs, or Terraform, or fucking around with log settings, or screwing around with all the…

Yeah - those are two very different roles and are separate job functions at a lot of places (depending on org size). I do both at my company.

I've never had that specific heads-down "programming" role where I can just read specs and write PRs all day, it's always been full-stack for me - which I personally enjoy... But the config / plumbing has always felt like a bit of drudgery.

At the end of the day that feels like the stuff that we do IN ORDER TO write code, so it doesn't really feel like the main event — so to speak.

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#38

Post by z500 »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #17
tombert wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose. I guess programming to me was always an excuse to do math, not necessarily to build products.

For me it's the exact opposite. I don't like math. I have very little intuition for it. Programming is not math for me even though people try to tell me that it is. Programming is my way to create something. It's like drawing or woodworking. It is creative and logical. That's why I don't mind or even like sysadmin stuff. But I know a lot of coworkers that don't like ops and in my company you don't have to do that. We…

I've never really been a math person, either, which is why I thought I was going to hate discrete math in college. I mean, it wasn't always the easiest thing ever, but it was a lot more intuitive to me than continuous math. And that's all programming is, materialized discrete math.

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#39

Post by mr_mitm »

tombert wrote: post #11
skydhash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I derive zero enjoyment from Kubernetes configs, or Terraform, or fucking around with log settings, or screwing around with all the knobs for Kafka. That stuff is agonizing. The click for me was thinking in terms of outcomes and system dynamics. So I make sure to get a good understanding of the final state. Tweaking without a goal is just playing around, or joyless work if you do not enjoy the process.

I suppose. I guess programming to me was always an excuse to do math, not necessarily to build products.

I take it you aren't programming business CRUD apps? I almost never have to do any math. It would be a delight if I did.

Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?

#40

Post by rramadass »

jimbokun wrote: post #20

> Your goals are set by others; information and resources are provided by others. The programmer rarely controls his working conditions, sometimes not even his objectives. In management terms, "one's authority is not commensurate with his responsibility." This is the real reason hackers start start ups.

Relevant:

Self-Determination Theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci - https://thorprojects.com/2020/05/04/book-review-why-we-do-wh...

Over-Justification Effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

Companies by emphasizing only on "extrinsic motivation" without understanding what drives a person, effectively kill "intrinsic motivation" and hence transform what was once enjoyable into a detestable chore.

Post reply on HN