Programmers’ emotions • Hacker News Board

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#101

Post by LouisSayers » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

I'm honestly not sure how you can make it past say 10 years in the industry without having the mental skills of a Buddhist Monk.

Coding isn't too bad for the most part, but on top of that it's like you have to manage the product owners / managers, coach your team mates, and put up with company politic dribble.

While you're doing all that people are constantly changing their minds, making you task switch to jump on fires the previous devs set up, and of course you're having to learn how to get around some libraries undocumented "peculiarities" or learn WTF it is that some legacy code is doing.

OH and you have to be full stack with knowledge in a,b,c,d,e,f,g.

"Coding" is draining because for the most part it's not coding...

After going through all the BS you just end up questioning why you're at Company Z in the first place. You then come to the conclusion that helping sell more ads isn't how you want to look back on your life or that you're helping prop up a dying product/industry, and you move on to the next shit show.

I'm honestly questioning whether I want to remain in the industry or whether I should take up something like Acting. Interested to hear if anyone's made a similar career move.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#102

Post by JoelMcCracken » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #97

open-source-ux wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of empathy abounds among programmers writing user-facing software. I am increasingly convinced lack of empathy is over-represented among developers. It's a controversial thought, and feel free to shoot it down. But why the lack of empathy? Is it because developers are more comfortable with computers than with people? This is a common stereotype about programmers. Perhaps it has more than a hint of truth to it? E…

It probably started out as a character trait among early programmers, but these days I'm convinced it's mostly a cultural thing. It's not actually about the software as much as these folks want to say it is by saying things like "RTFM"; it's selecting for people with similar emotional reactions to themselves. Consequently, you're also going to see more abrasiveness in very online programmers. Devs that don't want to…

The last time I remember seeing someone say "RTFM" is probably something like 2006? in the freenode bash IRC room. Where are you frequenting that you see such things?

I don't know any haskellers who I would think say or think the things you say. Most of them realize that they're into a niche thing. I think most of them want the good things of haskell to be shared to the larger community, but we just don't know how to get there from here.

Well, I take that back. There is one person I know of who is what I would consider gatekeeper-y, and I really generally disagree with him on almost everything, except I too like Haskell.

But this is one person out of the many many haskellers I know.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#103

Post by 8b16380d » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

LouisSayers wrote: post #101

I'm honestly not sure how you can make it past say 10 years in the industry without having the mental skills of a Buddhist Monk. Coding isn't too bad for the most part, but on top of that it's like you have to manage the product owners / managers, coach your team mates, and put up with company politic dribble. While you're doing all that people are constantly changing their minds, making you task switch to jump on fi…

The grass always seems greener. Dev jobs are objectively very comfortable. Problems exist in all industries/occupations, who's to say they aren't equally frustrating.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#104

Post by rpmisms » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

rockmeamedee wrote: post #82

The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component) is emotional management. Staying in a long debugging session without ragequitting and getting to the fix. Pushing through when I feel really dumb for not knowing how a react hook works or how to test a particular feature. Not getting bored (or recognising it and pus…

This spoke to me. Thank you for the check on my own imposter syndrome.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#105

Post by Karrot_Kream » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #102

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably started out as a character trait among early programmers, but these days I'm convinced it's mostly a cultural thing. It's not actually about the software as much as these folks want to say it is by saying things like "RTFM"; it's selecting for people with similar emotional reactions to themselves. Consequently, you're also going to see more abrasiveness in very online programmers. Devs that don't want to…

The last time I remember seeing someone say "RTFM" is probably something like 2006? in the freenode bash IRC room. Where are you frequenting that you see such things? I don't know any haskellers who I would think say or think the things you say. Most of them realize that they're into a niche thing. I think most of them want the good things of haskell to be shared to the larger community, but we just don't know how to…

> The last time I remember seeing someone say "RTFM" is probably something like 2006? in the freenode bash IRC room. Where are you frequenting that you see such things?

Just a cursory search, nothing specific:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28831243

https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_insane_part_one_endless_er...

https://lobste.rs/s/d1tk0e/overhead_returning_optional_value...

https://lobste.rs/s/cpfajx/java_16_gets_records_jep_395#c_dr...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29006854

I can definitely find more but this is what 5 minutes of searching turned up, and while many of them come from the same thread, I can find way more where that came from. There's legitimately a vocal contingent online that wants to gatekeep around PL usage. Note the language there: "inferior language and ecosystems", "Rob Pike doesn't trust programmers to be good", "The entire attitude is an apology for the bare fact that Go doesn’t have error-handling syntax", "perhaps we care a little too much about ordinary users?" These aren't solidarity-building statements. They're about flaming, expressing intransigent opinions, and gatekeeping.

> I don't know any haskellers who I would think say or think the things you say. Most of them realize that they're into a niche thing. I think most of them want the good things of haskell to be shared to the larger community, but we just don't know how to get there from here.

When I said "PL enthusiasts" or "suckless", I don't necessarily mean to say every, or even most, PL enthusiasts fall into that bucket. Likewise devs interested in simple architectures aren't all in the "suckless" camp. Like I said, there's plenty of folks doing great work exploring things like ML-based functional programming or simple, composable designs. What there also is though is a vocal community, probably a minority, of folks who _do_ create a tribe of gatekeepers. As I was saying in my last post, these folks are usually the Very Online type as most folks trying to actually get things done spend less time inciting flamewars and more time actually writing code.

But my post is more about this strain of very (online) visible toxicity in programming. Taking opinionated, intransigent positions is disturbingly common in programming and I largely think it's a practice holding the state of the art back.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#106

Post by bitwize » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #54

csours wrote: post #6

I've been thinking about this A LOT over the last year. Knowledge work is Emotional work. Software developers make software for PEOPLE. Making things for people requires empathy to be successful or else a whole lot of luck. Having empathy means putting myself out there. It means asking questions that sound ignorant. It means going from feeling like I had a great idea to seeing all the flaws and shortcomings of that i…

When people say you need soft skills to succeed they mean you need to have empathy for your manager and make your manager happy, nobody cares about the user. You see software riddled with bugs everywhere etc that would get fixed easily if anyone related to that project actually cared, but hey if the manager doesn't notice the problem then the problem doesn't exist so better not bring it up! What you'll find is that m…

Lack of empathy is commonly cited by Hackernews as the reason why some Linux app doesn't work exactly the way its macOS equivalent does.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#107

Post by asiachick » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #106

Jensson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say you need soft skills to succeed they mean you need to have empathy for your manager and make your manager happy, nobody cares about the user. You see software riddled with bugs everywhere etc that would get fixed easily if anyone related to that project actually cared, but hey if the manager doesn't notice the problem then the problem doesn't exist so better not bring it up! What you'll find is that m…

Lack of empathy is commonly cited by Hackernews as the reason why some Linux app doesn't work exactly the way its macOS equivalent does.

plug in a keyboard with an END key, oh ... like this one

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK2C3LL/A/magic-keyboard-...

and then tell me again that apple cars about the user or that HN wishes it was like MacOS :p

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#108

Post by JoelMcCracken » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #105

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I remember seeing someone say "RTFM" is probably something like 2006? in the freenode bash IRC room. Where are you frequenting that you see such things? I don't know any haskellers who I would think say or think the things you say. Most of them realize that they're into a niche thing. I think most of them want the good things of haskell to be shared to the larger community, but we just don't know how to…

> The last time I remember seeing someone say "RTFM" is probably something like 2006? in the freenode bash IRC room. Where are you frequenting that you see such things? Just a cursory search, nothing specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28831243 https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_insane_part_one_endless_er... https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_insane_part_one_endless_er... https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_in…

I see. When I read your statement, I interpreted it as statement about a majority of devs in such communities.

I actually came into the haskell community expecting MORE of such behavior, becuase I think common wisdom is that Haskell is full of gatekeeprs. I've been quite surprised by how little of it there actually are.

I'm not sure I totally grok your point re: golang. Just go read Rob pike's statement. That doesn't mean much about golang per se; he may have been attempting to make something suitable primarily for beginners, and hit upon some kind of impossibly powerful design (i'm thinking like scheme or something). But I hear about how bad golang code has to be, and well it makes me very sad.

Of course, golang does solve actual very real problems, and failing to acknowledge this is holding back the industry 100%. It also meets people where they are, not where the language author is, which is of course something we really need to come to terms with as a group of people who want to push the industry forward.

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#109

Post by nutellaandgo » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

sarsway wrote: post #41

Pure dread, when you have signed up for a new gig and open an existing code base for the first time. Starring at hundreds of unknown files and folder with no idea what anything is and how it all works. No going back, you're a new maintainer, so better get to it. Usually after a few days you start getting a grasp, and it's not so bad though :)

Even worse is being 1 year into the gig and still having no idea...

Re: Programmers’ emotions

#110

Post by playpause » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

DeusExMachina wrote: post #23

> Anxiety, inadequacy, and shame are just not helpful. It is good to reduce them if we can. Uhm, not really. All emotions have evolved because they are useful. The ones listed here could keep you from doing something stupid, dangerous, or potentially deadly. They are also likely to make you notice something wrong earlier than others. Are those emotions not helpful in some cases? Absolutely. Sometimes they are not jus…

"All emotions are useful" is wrong, they just were useful at some point. Anxiety in particular has very little utility today and big downsides for health. It's a fight/flight response thing that temporarily switches off important systems like digestion while heightening our senses and making us feel worried and alert. In the 21st century it creates far more problems than it solves.