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The self-hating web developer

joequery.me

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Re: The self-hating web developer

#41

Post by ectoplasm »

patio11 wrote: post #20

There are few things in life more important than choosing one's peer group well. The Internet gives you many more options than we had available prior to the existence of it. Choose wisely and re-evaluate that choice periodically to see whether your peer group continues to represent your goals and values. Why? Your peer group literally gets arbitrary code execution on your brain. (It's a flaw in MonkeyBrainOS 1.01 whi…

I wanted to say something like your comment is just 1st order making people feel bad about 0th order making people feel bad, but then I'd be 2nd order making you feel bad about 1st order making people feel bad about 0th order making people feel bad, so then I just thought about how I felt and it was bad. What a mess. Good points about the importance of choosing a good peer group, I totally agree. It's really hard when you have more than one group.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#42

Post by im3w1l »

therealmarv wrote: post #27

I worked several years in my early programming career in a big software company who developed mission critical software: traffic control software. You think they are bad ass programmers? You are totally wrong... the system (btw it was often Java or C based) we programmed on was so complicated that you need at least half of year day to day experience to know what you are doing there. And most frustrating part: There w…

It is (was?) quite popular to hate on "enterprise" too.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#43

Post by novarac23 »

dack wrote: post #2

I've definitely had these feelings too - sometimes still do (the feeling of struggling with a problem i assumed should be easy). I also tend to naturally spread out my knowledge a little too thin on various projects and not really make meaningful progress on any of them. Two things have helped for me - one is to have a useful project in mind for the thing you are learning, so you have a payoff at the end. The other i…

I think, as a community, we all have to make a mental note, that this shit is tough but with struggle comes the reward. We could learn a lot from pro athletes. Our general rule that we are "lazy" is so bad. You should not be lazy. Do the damn thing. It will be hard, but you are doing it for a reward.

It is super hard to remember that fact, when you are deep down in Node.js trying to figure out how streaming and event loop goes on. But thats where notes and big posters come in :)

Re: The self-hating web developer

#44

Post by amelius »

I have two problems with web programming. One is that the tools (e.g. HTML, CSS) seem to be designed for non-developers.

The other problem is that it is really, really hard to build a business on intellectual work, since eventually all good ideas end up as open source.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#45

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #20

There are few things in life more important than choosing one's peer group well. The Internet gives you many more options than we had available prior to the existence of it. Choose wisely and re-evaluate that choice periodically to see whether your peer group continues to represent your goals and values. Why? Your peer group literally gets arbitrary code execution on your brain. (It's a flaw in MonkeyBrainOS 1.01 whi…

[deleted]

Re: The self-hating web developer

#46

Post by vorador »

[deleted] wrote: post #45
patio11 wrote: post #20

There are few things in life more important than choosing one's peer group well. The Internet gives you many more options than we had available prior to the existence of it. Choose wisely and re-evaluate that choice periodically to see whether your peer group continues to represent your goals and values. Why? Your peer group literally gets arbitrary code execution on your brain. (It's a flaw in MonkeyBrainOS 1.01 whi…

[deleted]

Frankly, I have a hard time believing that the misanthropic commenters on r/programming are major opensource contributors. The most prolific programmers simply don't have time to waste on comment threads.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#47

Post by vdaniuk »

im3w1l wrote: post #40
vdaniuk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your attitude is exactly the part of the problem described in the post. For me, web development with all its exaggerated quirks and fast evolution of JavaScript frameworks is very exciting.

If we disregard "It's hard to get excited about this," which is just parent's subjective opinion, I think it's a plausible criticism of the field. Do you think it is wrong, and could you back it up?

Yes, I can back up that this "plausible criticism of the industry" has no roots in reality whatsoever.

>Sign: "It has been [0] days since the last new Javascript framework." Web developers must run very hard to stay in the same place.

We are talking about front end frameworks here, right?

Ok, here is data for usage of front-end frameworks for a top million websites:

Angular is used on 0.4% [0]

Ember is used on React is used on jQuery is used on 63% [3]

What conclusions are evident from these numbers? Modern "[0] days since..." JavaScript frameworks are used on the minuscule number of websites and therefore, empirically, an absolute majority of web developers must NOT run very hard to stay in the same place.

Even Backbone which is a reaaally old framework in JavaScript world is used only on 1.1%[4] of top websites.

So what do you say to this?

[0] https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/Angular-JS [1] https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/Ember [2] https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/React [3] https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery [4] https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/Backbone.js

Re: The self-hating web developer

#48

Post by k0doque »

austenallred wrote: post #9

The "language hate" in programming is truly cancerous. I know several people who started programming only to get twisted and turned around by experienced developers saying, "Don't learn PHP" then "Rails is a joke and doesn't scale well." I talk to them a week later, and they're trying to build a simple web app in functional Haskell, and their environment is all messed up because they are using a zsh configuration the…

I totally agree, and this is why I am quite angry with the "basic is bad for your brain" statement from Djiktra. I understand the sentiment, but the idea that starting with very basic "non-rigorous" language is not only a waste of time but will even hold you back make me lost several years on my programming career.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#49

Post by yomritoyj »

In intellectual pursuits like programming, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that only intellectually hard things are worthwhile. Which in turn leads us to think of an intellectual ladder with mathematics at the top. This causes us to disregard the creativity and effort required to produce useful things (such as websites) even when no intellectually hard problems need to be solved. I think this is a toxic frame of mind for anyone who is not a mathematician.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#50

Post by [deleted] »

vorador wrote: post #46
[deleted] wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Frankly, I have a hard time believing that the misanthropic commenters on r/programming are major opensource contributors. The most prolific programmers simply don't have time to waste on comment threads.

[deleted]
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