Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#141

Post by Starwatcher2001 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

larsonnn wrote: post #134

Starwatcher2001 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 62 and have been in this industry for 40+ years. The BIGGEST regret in my entire life has been the time I spent as a young man working stupid hours on "super important" jobs, and missing seeing much of my kids growing up.

First, very funny that with each comment the author is older. Second, I’m 33 and regret yet. I misunderstood every customer is king with every customer is important and has the right to call me outside of work. I worked 7 years about 60-70 hours each weak for customers which „are so important“ to work at weekends. No one will give you the time back you could have spend better by developing yourself, family time or st…

"First, very funny that with each comment the author is older."

Yeah, not quite as quick off the mark as you youngsters :-).

I posted a similar comment to yours in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27065714

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#142

Post by galangalalgol » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #138

Pretty decent article (don't agree with everything, but for the most part) > Code is secondary. Business value is first. I wish I could shout this from a mountaintop. If there's one thing I could change about engineering culture it would be this. But then again I would lose my edge if everyone understood this, so maybe it's best that they don't Engineers: If you want to stand out in your career - take this to heart.…

I had a boss for a while that took the opposite view. He just wanted to do interesting work. He was good at politics so he did, but the level he would have risen to in management if he had focused on business goals and money instead of fun work would have been much greater. But he also wouldn't have still been doing daily technical work which is all he wanted. We acknowledge that fun work can be part of total compensation, so accepting lower career advancement in return for more of that compensation doesn't strike me as unusual or a problem.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#143

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

sureglymop wrote: post #54

invalidname wrote: post #3

I like this list. It's also missing "debugging". That's a skill that they don't emphasize in college because they can't test it and it's hard to teach. But there are ways to teach it and techniques. There are some books on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484290410/ https://www.whyprogramsfail.com/ That can mitigate that a bit.

I find debugging hard when it comes to web development. How can I debug a typescript web app when 1. It will actually be in javascript once it's transpiled and 2. It will run in the browser and not in my ide. It uses some kind of live reloading dev server that is completely different than the production build. Currently I'm building something with sveltekit and i have no idea how to debug this except logging out mess…

[deleted]

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#144

Post by ricardobeat » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

fatneckbeard wrote: post #140

rco8786 wrote: post #138

Pretty decent article (don't agree with everything, but for the most part) > Code is secondary. Business value is first. I wish I could shout this from a mountaintop. If there's one thing I could change about engineering culture it would be this. But then again I would lose my edge if everyone understood this, so maybe it's best that they don't Engineers: If you want to stand out in your career - take this to heart.…

money is not the goal. providing a useful and valuable product or service to customers is the goal.

I'll have to disagree with this one, that's what that point is about. Great things can be achieved by focusing on UX and providing real value, but these are means to an end, and the business' end goal is still making money. Most of the time [1].

Can you whip up a quick & dirty feature that might generate more revenue if released tomorrow? You can bet it will be done. At this moment the engineers who know when/where to compromise stand out.

[1] companies with a strong ethos or social mission do exist. If you find one that makes you happy, hold onto it :)

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#145

Post by bosie » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

Galanwe wrote: post #93

atemerev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is a a single question: “do you have family/kids?” This is also the main reason for ageism in the industry, where employers prefer to hire younger people. I love programming, but I love my family even more.

I have a wife and a kid. Do you spend 100% of the your non-working hours with them? I manage to have a job, spend time with my wife, my kid, learn guitar, code & think on my free time, and I run 3 times a week. I don't watch TV though ;}

How many hours per night do you sleep and how much per week do you spend on each of those listed endeavours? No attack, just curious

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#146

Post by rco8786 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

fatneckbeard wrote: post #140

rco8786 wrote: post #138

Pretty decent article (don't agree with everything, but for the most part) > Code is secondary. Business value is first. I wish I could shout this from a mountaintop. If there's one thing I could change about engineering culture it would be this. But then again I would lose my edge if everyone understood this, so maybe it's best that they don't Engineers: If you want to stand out in your career - take this to heart.…

money is not the goal. providing a useful and valuable product or service to customers is the goal.

Totally incorrect, at least in a business context. If it were the case, you would build that useful and valuable product and then give it to your customer for free. But you would never, ever, do that (unless it was specifically as a loss leader for other products) because making money is the goal.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#147

Post by no1lives4ever » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

sureglymop wrote: post #54

invalidname wrote: post #3

I like this list. It's also missing "debugging". That's a skill that they don't emphasize in college because they can't test it and it's hard to teach. But there are ways to teach it and techniques. There are some books on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484290410/ https://www.whyprogramsfail.com/ That can mitigate that a bit.

I find debugging hard when it comes to web development. How can I debug a typescript web app when 1. It will actually be in javascript once it's transpiled and 2. It will run in the browser and not in my ide. It uses some kind of live reloading dev server that is completely different than the production build. Currently I'm building something with sveltekit and i have no idea how to debug this except logging out mess…

When push comes to shove, go down to the most the basic of debugger tools. Print output to a tracing/console. I have had to resort to some version of temporary print statements in my code to get thru with debugging. And along the way have found many situations where those print statements or the logging/tracing equivalents introduced changes that altered the program's behavior.

I remember finding a situation where output of console.log would not match reality when debugging using chrome's debugger while working on a react app in 2019. Had to resort to making a copy of the variables to get console.log working in that situation.

When it comes to web deveopment, like others have said, it is easy to debug modern web apps with the help of source maps. We have been doing some version of that for a long time now. I remember using source maps with codeview back in the late 80s/early 90s.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#148

Post by rco8786 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #142

rco8786 wrote: post #138

Pretty decent article (don't agree with everything, but for the most part) > Code is secondary. Business value is first. I wish I could shout this from a mountaintop. If there's one thing I could change about engineering culture it would be this. But then again I would lose my edge if everyone understood this, so maybe it's best that they don't Engineers: If you want to stand out in your career - take this to heart.…

I had a boss for a while that took the opposite view. He just wanted to do interesting work. He was good at politics so he did, but the level he would have risen to in management if he had focused on business goals and money instead of fun work would have been much greater. But he also wouldn't have still been doing daily technical work which is all he wanted. We acknowledge that fun work can be part of total compens…

Yea no issues with that at all. That's why I prefaced my entire comment with "If you want to stand out in your career".

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#149

Post by LtWorf » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

theteapot wrote: post #20

> My god, how many times has my Linux machine crashed with a segfault? It’s crazy. Zero times? It is crazy.

Happened to me because of nvidia video card (unused) on a work machine… changed the bios to not use it and that was it.

That's out of tens of machines, over several years of running linux.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#150

Post by flohofwoe » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

sally_glance wrote: post #117

flohofwoe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this may be a 'cultural' issue: For instance in Germany with its strong engineering tradition, nobody in their right mind would call somebody who builds software an 'engineer' (there are some google hits for "Softwareingeneur" but I bet this has a fairly recent thing and has been leaking back from English). A person who builds software is simply called a 'programmer' or 'developer' here. And I really have m…

I've worked with multiple german companies that declared their programmers as engineers, "Jr/Mid/Sr Software Engineer" or the more focused "Frontend/Backend/Fullstack Software Engineer". Maybe that's more of a thing in agencies? But then I think SAP calls them "Software Engineer" as well.

I suspect this is mainly because the whole hiring process has been internationalized, and 'Software Engineer' seems to have become the common international phrase for 'anybody who has the ability to author software'.

15 years ago it would have been "Softwareentwickler" or "Programmierer" (optionally with the requirement of a degree in computer science, which - funny enough - also isn't excplicitely called a 'science' in Germany, but simply 'informatics'), even though the job description would be exactly the same as today.