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How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

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Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#101

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #83
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer I am in this profession (and it's been over 20 years) the less I see my peers as "dicks and idiots" but more as victims of the same broken game. I work with very smart people, to be honest. It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. Retiring sounds good right about now.

How so? The job situation for good developers has never been better. We can make salaries that would have seemed unthinkable two decades ago while working from home and doing something we enjoy.

This has not been my experience. It seems that it's a young person's game, and us older folks are not particularly encouraged to participate. Frankly, I've been stunned by the way in which I was treated, in the short period of time I spent looking for work, after leaving my last company.

Thankfully, I am not required to work, and have been having the best time I could imagine, since giving up on working for others. Instead, I work with people for free, on projects that I think are constructive and give back to society.

I am working from home, doing something that I enjoy tremendously. I'm doing the best work of my life. I just got done refactoring a fairly large backend that I wrote a couple of years ago, and am actually thrilled at the quality (and quantity) of my work. It's driving the application that I'm developing. I wasn't satisfied with some of the popular offerings, and had already written the backend as an exercise, so I used that, instead. It just needed a bit of tweaking to fit the new application.

I love programming and system design. I'm really good at it. I write code every single day of my life (My GH profile is solid green, and it's not "gamed"[0]).

It's just that I found others are not interested in working with me. It hurt, as I had spent my entire career, working on teams, but I rubbed some dirt on it and walked it off. In the aggregate, I'm actually glad that I went through that.

[0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#104

Post by blackrock »

reaperducer wrote: post #88
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer I am in this profession (and it's been over 20 years) the less I see my peers as "dicks and idiots" but more as victims of the same broken game. I work with very smart people, to be honest. It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. Retiring sounds good right about now.

Retiring sounds good right about now. I'm with you. If I had another skill, I'd give up computers entirely. Maybe have a smartphone, and that's it. But only for limited use. I wish I could build things with my hands, or play an instrument, or just be good at something else, and let the tech world pass me by. I used to love technology because it was fun and interesting. It's no longer either of those things.

A lot of people seem to just create YouTube videos of their woodworking skills. Building drawers, cabinets, anything. They just drone away at it, but because it’s so visual, and you get a cacophony of random noises, that it makes for a good YouTube candidate.

Maybe you can segue into that?

Or maybe you can build and test drones. And the noise from the spinning propellers adds to the mystique of robotics development.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#105

Post by pjmorris »

andrewflnr wrote: post #15

While I don't disagree with the article, this quote better sums up how I feel about programming. > The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination... Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construc…

I was burned out at a programming job and thinking about finding something else to do when I first read this section in 'The Mythical Man Month.' It reminded me of the wonder I'd felt at first, and that was still in there, and it became part of what has kept me hanging around the profession for another 30 years or so, so far.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#106

Post by mckirk »

DC1350 wrote: post #82
rektide wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But answering the question literally, I am not representative of everyone in the industry, I am deeply /deeply/ romantic about programming, but industry is dreck. Unimaginative, low potential, sapping, low-ambition, filled with endless middle- & low-roads & compromises. Countless stakeholders, endless non-technical-personals to "reason" with. Plans & designs & endless corporate aligning & planning. All for middling…

Quoted post unavailable.

That seems like a harsh view. A lot of software isn't very glamorous or exciting at first glance, that's true. But if you're sufficiently intrigued by logic puzzles and the challenge of solving things elegantly, my guess is that even the most boring piece of software has some opportunity for fun buried in its architecture.

But since you don't seem to be able to relate that too much, maybe you are just motivated by other things than many programmers. What would be the 'actual fun' things then in your opinion, that you have to be 'socially successful' to participate in?

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#107

Post by vinger »

DC1350 wrote: post #82
rektide wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But answering the question literally, I am not representative of everyone in the industry, I am deeply /deeply/ romantic about programming, but industry is dreck. Unimaginative, low potential, sapping, low-ambition, filled with endless middle- & low-roads & compromises. Countless stakeholders, endless non-technical-personals to "reason" with. Plans & designs & endless corporate aligning & planning. All for middling…

Quoted post unavailable.

Making a file manager sounds interesting. A customer service platform not so much because I've done it before. A payroll system could be interesting.

Typing a letter and having it show up interests me.

  What interests you?

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#108

Post by wwww4all »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27
rufus_foreman wrote: post #4

"After a while, more and more, you’ll find yourself in moments of awe, stunned by the size and fragility of it all; the mountains of work and talent and creativity and foresight and intelligence and luck that went into it. And you’ll reach for the word “magic” because you won’t know how else to describe it and then you lean back and smile, wondering how someone could not." I guess I wish I felt like that about progra…

The longer I am in this profession (and it's been over 20 years) the less I see my peers as "dicks and idiots" but more as victims of the same broken game. I work with very smart people, to be honest. It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. Retiring sounds good right about now.

I've been wrangling software bytes for a while and I am pragmatic about the business.

Software engineering is extremely difficult. High performance engineers are rare and valuable. Some times, they become jaded and burn out.

This is my career and my craft, so I'm inclined to ride the waves and trends in software engineering. Negotiate for above average salary while maintaining my tech stack and producing at above average output.

Most people don't understand what it takes to develop and deploy software solutions. They only see the unicorns like Google, Facebook, and think software engineers are common. They don't see the vast swaths of land of failed software startups and dreams and incompetence in software engineering.

Most people in software engineering doesn't know or comprehend basic data structures and algorithms, which form basis for all software solutions at scale. Yet, they are filled into dev position slots by HR/management and asked to develop complex systems.

To have long term career in software engineering is like any other trade. Observe how the game is played, learn to play the game and play the game right.

A software engineer with basic skill stack and right long term view can ride the software wave for decades, just by understanding basic CS principles and utilizing them to develop solutions. Switch jobs regularly and negotiate hard for salary and levels.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#109

Post by Delk »

DC1350 wrote: post #82
rektide wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But answering the question literally, I am not representative of everyone in the industry, I am deeply /deeply/ romantic about programming, but industry is dreck. Unimaginative, low potential, sapping, low-ambition, filled with endless middle- & low-roads & compromises. Countless stakeholders, endless non-technical-personals to "reason" with. Plans & designs & endless corporate aligning & planning. All for middling…

Quoted post unavailable.

Some people just have great interest in a narrow area.

I agree that most of those types of applications have a very low interest-to-drudgery ratio just in general, and I personally don't find them interesting at all. But let's not forget that some people just have interest in the details of things that most other people don't really care about. Some of that work might not even be objectively that technically demanding, yet it somehow catches the attention of some people.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#110

Post by vlunkr »

reaperducer wrote: post #88
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer I am in this profession (and it's been over 20 years) the less I see my peers as "dicks and idiots" but more as victims of the same broken game. I work with very smart people, to be honest. It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. Retiring sounds good right about now.

Retiring sounds good right about now. I'm with you. If I had another skill, I'd give up computers entirely. Maybe have a smartphone, and that's it. But only for limited use. I wish I could build things with my hands, or play an instrument, or just be good at something else, and let the tech world pass me by. I used to love technology because it was fun and interesting. It's no longer either of those things.

I know it's the biggest cliche in the world, but the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Lots of musicians wish they had a skill that let them sit at a desk all day and get a stable paycheck.

Not saying you have to keep working in tech forever, but I don't think it's objectively stopped being fun and interesting.

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