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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)

#121

Post by throwawayboise »

psalminen wrote: post #78
3princip wrote: post #65

I've found being too attached to code is a recipe for frustration in the workplace. You code something elegant, simple, dare I say beautiful and inevitably it will be butchered by new product requirements, business needs, that quick hack to satisfy a client or more generally uncaring colleagues who are looking to get their job done as quickly as possible. Perhaps romantic aspects could only be achieved when there are…

This reminded me of something that happened last week. I had written some code I found absolutely beautiful, then had to delete an hour later since the customer's requirements had changed. Personally, I find these situations disheartening but it's never frustrated me.

Why delete it?

Tuck it away for later use. If somebody wanted it enough to ask for it in a formal way, someone else would probably find it useful.

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

#122

Post by amelius »

brmgb wrote: post #34

While I somewhat admire the author feelings, as a direct answer to the chosen title, I have to say I don't share them at all. I view programming with a mix of indifference and boredom and the sad few years I had to do it as a job are easily the less fulfilling of my life. If I had to sum up my feelings regarding programming, I would say it is: - a lot of uninteresting busy work; - intellectually mostly unchallenging.…

> a lot of uninteresting busy work; - intellectually mostly unchallenging

My guess is that you should have followed your programmer's instincts and automated the uninteresting work.

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

#123

Post by convolvatron »

Delk wrote: post #87
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.

> It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. What is it about those things that you find to be the problem? Genuinely asking.

i can take a whack -

no one works as a team anymore. everyone gets their project, and they sometimes chat about it, but the whole group dynamic has been lost. this is huge. it almost guarantees that someone is pissed off because they dont have a voice. and that at least two developers are working at cross purposes. that someone is off diligently working on their piece without a real understanding of where it fits in.

in the absence of group coordination, there generally is little or no technical management to prop up the group. requirements are dumped on engineering without the valuable back and forth about what makes sense (and how or why)

no one tests anymore. we've all decided that those 8 units that the cicd runs on every commit is somehow adequate. alot of places dont even try to triage bugs anymore or even keep information in tickets so that someone down the line might figure it out

no one plans anymore. there is no more grand arc of the project. we just do what we can get done this sprint, and pick up a little work for the next one.

no one reads anymore. technical design discourse used to be the most important thing to do. now if you write up a draft, no one really wants to read or discuss it beyond grammar corrections

same for reviews - i've been at organizations where every PR was a chance to really get into the design choices and the tradoffs. now you're lucky to get some useless style comments

the scope is radically reduced. what used to be a glorious exercise in world building is now reduced to a choice of which large modules to use and the application of just enough glue to stick them together.

no one feels responsible anymore. the project is a mess. i've got my part and I'm doing the best I can.

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

#124

Post by aspaceman »

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…

Write more code - solve fewer problems.

Engineers solve problems. We use our expertise to take stressful and difficult problems and reduce them into simpler ones. You cut through bureaucracy and a healthy amount of talky bullshit to solve problems. The better you are at this, the more you're rewarded as an engineer. But this is a taxing process.

Writing code is creative. You find your own problems, and solve the ones you want to solve. If you don't want to solve something, you let it fester - or nurture it - as you wish.

Take a look at Racket. Read a book about Lisp games programming. Find an old C64 and learn some BASIC. Check out PICO-8. Or see Inigo's SDF website and try out some shadertoy. Ignore practicality, or focus only on your individual practicality.

Engineering is a discipline and that makes it tiring over time. You don't always have to be improving something.

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

#125

Post by throwawayboise »

carlmr wrote: post #120
throwawayboise wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't seem that way. I'm not unhappy, or suicidal, or gloomy about the future. I just don't find that anything really feels "new" and therefore nothing really seems exciting. It's like if I got that cliche question "what are you passionate about" in an interview, my answer would be "nothing."

Don't you have the feeling you want something exciting?

I'll put it this way, I have no real burning desire to do anything that I haven't already done.

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

#126

Post by GuB-42 »

3princip wrote: post #65

I've found being too attached to code is a recipe for frustration in the workplace. You code something elegant, simple, dare I say beautiful and inevitably it will be butchered by new product requirements, business needs, that quick hack to satisfy a client or more generally uncaring colleagues who are looking to get their job done as quickly as possible. Perhaps romantic aspects could only be achieved when there are…

If your code gets butchered it is not that great. That's something I am slowly learning, and by slowly I mean in the scale of decades.

I've seen some of my old code I wrote in the workplace ten years ago, going through the hands of many developers of various skill levels and with different ideas, and then getting back to me. Needless to say, it is pretty ugly.

Analyzing that, I found the real good parts mostly untouched. The parts that I though were great when I wrote them and make me feel ashamed today usually didn't hold up. The most butchered parts tend to be of the overly abstract kind. Interestingly, some of the complicated and clever stuff that most people advise against did well. If it does the job well, people will keep it and put it to good use.

You can code romantically in the workplace. You just have to realize your code will be under attack and it has to be strong enough to defend itself. Weak code is not beautiful anyways, so in the end, all that adversity will help make your code better and more beautiful.

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

#127

Post by throwawayboise »

beaconstudios wrote: post #119
throwawayboise wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't seem that way. I'm not unhappy, or suicidal, or gloomy about the future. I just don't find that anything really feels "new" and therefore nothing really seems exciting. It's like if I got that cliche question "what are you passionate about" in an interview, my answer would be "nothing."

I think it's fair to not be passionate about programming. As long as you have some sort of creative/passion outlet.

> As long as you have some sort of creative/passion outlet

I used to feel that I did, when I was younger. Not really these days. But I'm not sad about it.

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

#128

Post by cjsawyer »

vlunkr wrote: post #110
reaperducer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the “trick” is to find a fulfilling non computer based hobby

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

#129

Post by henrik_w »

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 love that quoute! The whole "The Joys of the Craft" is well worth reading. It also includes:

- The sheer joy of making things

- The pleasure of making things that are useful to other people

- The fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts, and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning.

- The joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task

It really captures what I love about programming: https://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-coding/

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

#130

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

infogulch wrote: post #44
rufus_foreman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on an app that calls other internal services inside our company, one of them is a call to update an account balance. We were running into this issue where we were getting a 504 Gateway Timeout on the update balance call so I eventually found the Slack room for that team and asked about it. They ignored me for a couple weeks, but I kept asking and eventually someone answered and said yeah you'll get the 50…

I can guarantee you that 5 other teams rely on that specific behavior and don't have the will/independence ("budget") to implement that change if the api was fixed. Not only that, but if they did make that change, their manager would instantly have a handful of directors down their throat demanding an explanation why they just added work to their teams that are busy with Feature Work (TM).

Too real.
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