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

Programming is Not Terrible

blog.m1cr0sux0r.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 39 posts

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#11

Post by debacle »

Afforess wrote: post #7
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…

Wow I thought I was cynical. Have you considered doing something new? Learning a new framework or language often gives me a fresh perspective on past projects.

I try and learn a new framework and a new language a few times a year.

They never solve the actual fundamental problem of computing - we still trust computers less than a four year old when it comes to understanding context and meaning in language.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#12

Post by UK-AL »

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 going to enjoy it as a job. So you can easily end up hating your job.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#13

Post by crazygringo »

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…

There's a great Vooza video that pokes fun at wide-eyed wonder. [1]

"Does your enthusiasm permeate the walls of our office like a disease?" "In the tech world, you've got to be incredibly passionate about... really boring things." "They need to care more about our mission... than whether or not they're gonna get health care. 'Cause they won't."

[1] http://vooza.com/videos/job-requirements/

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#14

Post by NathanKP »

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…

putting together CRUD apps and laying out contact forms

That's the problem. If that's all you are doing 90% of the time after ten years it's time to move on to a different company.

Once a company gets large and has numerous engineers it tends to settle down into a environment where people have set roles as engineers where they work on simple boring projects.

But when you are building something from scratch in a small startup team you'll often have a more flexible role where you are writing core code, solving scaling problems, configuring servers and load balancers, tuning database queries, and numerous other things. From day to day you are learning new technologies and coding new things all the time.

That's what keeps software engineering fresh and enjoyable for me.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#15

Post by Vaskivo »

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…

To this whole discussion of "Is programming terrible or not?" I have to quote Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

I'm just a newbie (started my programming job 9 months ago) but most of the stuff I do is kinda boring. I try to enjoy myself, and I believe clever people can find ways to enjoy what they're doing. Somedays are just a bore, with crappy documentation, crappy tools, and everything just crashes around you. Other days you find a new and interesting problem. This is when you must set your brain free and tackle that problem like an hungry wolf.

And in the end, it's just my job. I NEED to have a job to have my independence and enjoy some of life's pleasures. But it's just a job. It's a mean to an end. I need a job to buy videogames, go to the movies, travel, enjoy an expensive dinner, etc.

And I like programming. I program at home, making games and scripting stuff. I't just that 90% of software engineering is crap. You just need to wait for and enjoy the other 10%.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#16

Post by Afforess »

UK-AL wrote: post #10
Afforess wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I thought I was cynical. Have you considered doing something new? Learning a new framework or language often gives me a fresh perspective on past projects.

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.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#17

Post by NathanKP »

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…

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 easily.

A while back I put a very simple entry on an HN contractor thread and started getting two to three job offers a month in my inbox, many from very interesting companies doing interesting things. This was while I was still in college, not actively looking for a job yet. I accepted interview offers from a few of those companies and basically picked and choose who I wanted to work for, which eventually lead to me getting a job at the startup I work for now (storydesk.com) without ever needing to send out a single resume.

Maybe my experience is unusual, but I don't see it as being that difficult to get an interesting job as a software engineer if you leverage a community like HN.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#18

Post by AUmrysh »

I got really burned out on programming my senior year at university and after 2 years of working alone on a massive web app. There are many other things I'd rather be doing, like running a company or killing people for money or something exciting, but I suspect that those jobs would get boring/old after a while too.

The important thing to keep in mind is that your day job is a way to earn an income. If you don't enjoy it, at least do yourself a favor and find one you care to show up to every day.

If you really want to work on "hard problems" and other groundbreaking and cutting edge technologies, you can always do it in your free time. Whether you want to write software at work and then do it at home is another story, but keep in mind that if you're successful, you can turn your side project into your career, one you actually do give a shit about doing every day.

The great thing about software is that you are only limited by your knowledge and determination. There are very few problems you need a massive expensive computer to solve (at a small scale, at least), so your home computer is usually just as capable as your work computer.

If you're bored with programming, why don't you start digging into the parts that really get you excited. For me, that's functional languages and dynamic typed languages, computer vision, and machine learning.

Don't be afraid to try new things and fail at them. If you just sit around doing the same mundane work all day, don't be surprised when you believe all of software is mundane.

I actually agree that programming sucks, but that's more to do with the fact that you have to turn an idea into logic and math before you can make a computer do it.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#19

Post by sequence7 »

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 so that everyone benefits.

The biggest problem I find programmers coming up against is cummunication and understanding and yet 95% of them would rather point out how their immediate coding problem isn't challenging enough to their almighty brains.

Re: Programming is Not Terrible

#20

Post by AUmrysh »

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.

25 year old here, I agree. I only know enough of the frameworks I've learned to solve the problems I've come across. As far as compilers and ML... yeah, I know a little bit of that stuff, but it's far from common for people in my age range to be good at it.
Post reply on HN