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Programming is Not Terrible

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Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#21

Post by Shish2k »

debacle wrote: post #4

I have a hypothesis. Is it possible that the people who talk with wide-eyed wonder about programming after doing it for ten years and the passion that they have for writing software haven't come to appreciate the banality of almost every problem that they're going to be asked to solve in the software space? If you find putting together CRUD apps and laying out contact forms challenging and engaging after ten years, y…

> people wouldn't have been bitching for years about how bad the open source ORM they're using is - they would have rewritten it already, twice.

I would do that, I just don't have enough time :(

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#22

Post by debacle »

sequence7 wrote: post #19
debacle wrote: post #4

I have a hypothesis. Is it possible that the people who talk with wide-eyed wonder about programming after doing it for ten years and the passion that they have for writing software haven't come to appreciate the banality of almost every problem that they're going to be asked to solve in the software space? If you find putting together CRUD apps and laying out contact forms challenging and engaging after ten years, y…

Oh please. I have a theory about people who talk with patronising disdain about how programming is easy and you can do everything with open source already. Work is work, if it was all fun you wouldn't get paid for it. If most programmers want a challenge in their day job they could try learning how to communicate or how not to assume that everyone else is an idiot or even try and improve the processes their team use…

I guess you're assuming that I'm one of those semi-autistic types who isn't happy unless he's slugging down coffee while trying to hack the Gibson or whatever.

I'm not - the social aspect of problem solving, and especially the social aspects of requirement gathering, is the best part of my job.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#23

Post by molex333 »

debacle wrote: post #4

I have a hypothesis. Is it possible that the people who talk with wide-eyed wonder about programming after doing it for ten years and the passion that they have for writing software haven't come to appreciate the banality of almost every problem that they're going to be asked to solve in the software space? If you find putting together CRUD apps and laying out contact forms challenging and engaging after ten years, y…

As the author of this post, I can tell you that many of the things I do day to day are not mentally challenging, but are still fun. Have you ever played any games in your life? Are they still fun when they aren't mentally challenging? Of course. If you enjoy something, then it will be fun whenever you do it. Not just cool problems or challenging ones, but all problems. The only part of my job that isn't fun is going to pointless meetings..but that is a crappy part of most corporate jobs.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#24

Post by Tloewald »

Good post.

The original article (which this article addresses) falls straight out of the most entitled kind of thinking ("the world owes me a living I enjoy"). I'd go further: even if you don't enjoy programming, there are far more horrible ways to earn a far worse living, and plenty of people have little choice.

Yesterday, I ordered pizza which was delivered by a guy older than me (and I'm no spring chicken -- I learned programming on an HP calculator) who wasted ten minutes finding my apartment because the delivery instructions were so poorly printed as to be unreadable.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#25

Post by UK-AL »

Afforess wrote: post #16
UK-AL wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, when most programmers hit 25 they have already learned dozens of frameworks, know how to build compilers, machine learning, etc. The problem is after a certain age, all the cool/novel stuff no longer is, and it becomes boring as hell and your back to building CRUD Apps and your still got most of your career ahead of you.

> when most programmers hit 25 they have already learned dozens of frameworks, know how to build compilers, machine learning, etc Really? I have yet to meet one of these 25-year olds.

What 25 year old developers hasn't learned frameworks like django, rails, Java EE, iOS, node.js etc. I know fair few frameworks, some more than others.

The majority of university courses teach you compilers(Parsing, Multi-pass optimisation, machine code output) and ML. I've built a fair few compilers in spare time, and I'm in no way special within my peers. Sure the stuff you learn probably isn't leading edge in terms of research, but unless you take a second job reading research papers, it isn't going to happen for most software developers.

The most enjoyable part of job is probably introducing better software processes, but once it is set up well, I get bored again.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#26

Post by molex333 »

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Excellent. This is what I wish I could have said in response to that other article, but couldn't find the words for. This post is exactly right -- and I've seen a few newly-hired programmers in their first job out of college who had a very difficult time adjusting to the "real world", where programming isn't about fun and games and self-fulfillment any more, it's about creating real-world value. There's nothing uniqu…

I agree, I wrote this to just to show that there are still people who enjoy their work and think that it is a great profession.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#27

Post by molex333 »

UK-AL wrote: post #12
NathanKP wrote: post #9

If you like writing software, if you look forward to getting your next assignment, then you should probably go ahead and pursue it as a career. If you trudge through it and show some aptitude for it, but you don't enjoy it, please choose another career. Exactly. It seems that recently there have been a lot of young people who are treating the Software Engineer position kind of like the RN position. They think "There…

"If you like writing software, if you look forward to getting your next assignment, then you should probably go ahead and pursue it as a career" - The thing is academic/personal assignments are probably novel and interesting, while 99% of business programming isn't. The jobs that have problems that are novel or interesting, are damn hard to get. So if you enjoy it at school/hobby, that has no relation to if your goin…

But just because you hate your job is no reason to damn an entire profession.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#28

Post by UK-AL »

NathanKP wrote: post #17
UK-AL wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you like writing software, if you look forward to getting your next assignment, then you should probably go ahead and pursue it as a career" - The thing is academic/personal assignments are probably novel and interesting, while 99% of business programming isn't. The jobs that have problems that are novel or interesting, are damn hard to get. So if you enjoy it at school/hobby, that has no relation to if your goin…

The jobs that have problems that are novel or interesting, are damn hard to get. I disagree. The monthly Who's Hiring thread here on HN is full of great jobs solving interesting problems. If you find those jobs "damn hard" to get maybe you need to learn some of the in demand skills or build a better portfolio of projects that you've worked on. A github full of open source activity can get you an interesting job quite…

some of the in demand skills? Such as?

Mobile Development Skills? I know that. The majority apps are boring though, interfacing with a web service, saving and displaying data etc.

Web Devs Skills? I know Django the best, but again 99% of people using web frameworks are just doing the normal inputting and outputting data out of a database routine.

ML? I know that, but most companies only hire serious academic researchers, or people with previous experience of it. I have MSc in CS with quite a lot ML in it, but most are looking Ph.Ds;

Compilers? I've built a few prototypes. But very few companies actually need this.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#29

Post by sequence7 »

debacle wrote: post #22
sequence7 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. I have a theory about people who talk with patronising disdain about how programming is easy and you can do everything with open source already. Work is work, if it was all fun you wouldn't get paid for it. If most programmers want a challenge in their day job they could try learning how to communicate or how not to assume that everyone else is an idiot or even try and improve the processes their team use…

I guess you're assuming that I'm one of those semi-autistic types who isn't happy unless he's slugging down coffee while trying to hack the Gibson or whatever. I'm not - the social aspect of problem solving, and especially the social aspects of requirement gathering, is the best part of my job.

I did rather assume that but consider this a retraction of my assumption.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#30

Post by molex333 »

mschmo wrote: post #2

Just a slight suggestion that doesn't actually have to do with the article itself: Make your links stick out more. Maybe I just have bad eyes but I really can't tell if a word is a link until I hover over it.

Thanks for the input, I have since modified this a bit to make the links more visible.
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