I get that this is beside the point, but it might make the author to feel better to know that writers are no less prone to same character flaw of becoming overly attached to their own implementation of an idea, often to their detriment in the marketplace. Hence the common advice to writers that you must "kill your babies".
Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
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Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#12I get that this is beside the point, but it might make the author to feel better to know that writers are no less prone to same character flaw of becoming overly attached to their own implementation of an idea, often to their detriment in the marketplace. Hence the common advice to writers that you must "kill your babies".
I was thinking of adding that line! "Kill your darlings" is like kill the weak products that make no value!
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#13> The app isn’t a representation of me, it’s not a measure of how smart, dumb, or successful I am. It’s just an attempt at creating value.
It's a good mindset to have and I absolutely agree with most of the article when it comes to non-recreational programming. I generally think it's a little pretentious to call code "elegant" or likewise.
> Once I internalised this, I stopped caring about clean code, perfection, and judging the value of my apps myself.
I struggle to relate to this though. I believe good code is a means to make it easier to make a product better and ship faster. Hell, I agree it doesn't have to be "clean" but I couldn't bring myself caring about it altogether.
P.S. Well coding might not be art but it can absolutely be used to make art. The tldr (without the context of making SaaS) is incorrect in my viewpoint.
[edited for clarity]
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#14I disagree. It's not a matter of whether a problem was solved or not solved. Problems can be approached in different ways. What structures and design patterns someone used, what approach they took to solving a problem can certainly be expressive.
The annual Genuary art project is a great example of code as expressive writing.
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#15> There’s one key change I made to escape this cycle: I remind myself that I’m not an artist, and coding isn’t creative expression.
Unless you're into code golf or other forms of "art", a software developer is first and foremost a craftsperson, depending on the position maybe even an engineer, leader, or scienctist.
Ideally you build things you're proud of, because they're useful and maybe even beautiful and masterfully crafted.
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#16> The app isn’t a representation of me, it’s not a measure of how smart, dumb, or successful I am. It’s just an attempt at creating value. It's a good mindset to have and I absolutely agree with most of the article when it comes to non-recreational programming. I generally think it's a little pretentious to call code "elegant" or likewise. > Once I internalised this, I stopped caring about clean code, perfection, and…
Definitely heard – tldr was absolutely only in the context of "building product".
Re: > Once I internalised this, I stopped caring about clean code, perfection, and judging the value of my apps myself.
I think I meant shifting more to customer centric valuation. Should have been more clear.
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#17Shallow interpretation. The difference is merely in the number of steps in between the words, and the impression they make. Code has a couple compilation steps before it reaches the brain.
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#18There are forms of coding that resemble art, they elicit feelings, but that's true of math also.
The issue, like more academic writing (or music composition for that matter), is that to be able to appreciate those works, a certain level of specific knowledge is required.
It doesn't have mass appeal, but it is a creative process.
Even when doing for hire work, where the value is clearly on its usefulness, we still have the notion of "elegance" (which is a form of beauty).
Where some truly clever construction solves a problem in a surprising yet pleasing way.
Coming up with that novel way of attacking the problem it a purely creative endeavor (although bound by the constraints of the problem at hand).
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#19> I’ve fallen into this trap so many times (Grapevine, Venyu, etc). But now, I think I’m finally out. There’s one key change I made to escape this cycle: I remind myself that I’m not an artist, and coding isn’t creative expression. There should be no huge emotional investment or pursuit of beauty in shipping SaaS, so I need divorce myself from the end result.
Agree that we shouldn't invest ourselves emotionally too much in outcomes beyond the code: there are too many arbitrary and non-technical factors that go into the success or failure of a given software project.
However, code beauty is the game within the game of software, and should be pursued for its own sake. Beauty is subjective to an extent, but if you aren't at least trying for beautiful code you aren't fully actualizing yourself as a programmer.
Re: Writers can write anything. Programmers can't
#20> The objective metric for value is varying degrees of “was my problem solved”.
Everything said rests upon this. And this is an incredibly present view of programming.
And it's just so hogwash, to me. There's infinite paths we can take in programming to make something happen. Winnowing our view to only consider whether technically we have checked the box or not, blinding ourselves to how we win, disregarding countless other tangible and intangibles: it's an oppressive curse against the craft.
Craftsmen are capable of grappling with the intangibles; they use taste to pick paths that have internal elegance, legibility. They spawn architectures that perform well, atop a selection of apt tools and libraries from a wealth of known options, and which can be worked and reworked on as needed.
You can ignore every cofactor of production at your own risk, but the intangibles of how we win often matter, are an ever expanding horizontal and vertical depth of systems which will create path dependencies for all work going forward. People who focus only on immediate does it work outcomes rob us of vision and dream and short the real journey, which isn't ticket by ticket, but is something whole and bigger, is many components which to work well together require your skill at thinking and imagining comprehensively.