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The Programmer Identity Crisis

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141–150 of 317 posts

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#141

Post by kiitos »

greymalik wrote: post #27

> One could only wonder why they became a programmer in the first place, given their seeming disinterest in coding. To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself. > careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.

> To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself.

solving problems is an outcome of programming, not the purpose of programming

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#142

Post by lezojeda »

Etheryte wrote: post #89
strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

In my opinion this is another case where people look at it as a technical problem when it's actually a people problem. If someone does it once, they get a stern message about it. If it happens twice, it gets rejected and sent to their manager. Regardless of how you authored a pull request, you are signing off on it with your name. If it's garbage, then you're responsible.

What do you do if the manager enables it?

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#143

Post by 0x457 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #136
0x457 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit harsh off a single post. I like solving problems, not just software engineering problems and I like writing code as a hobby, but I went to this job field only due to high salary and benefits. In fact, I usually hate writing code at day job because it is boring things 20 out of 26 sprints.

>A bit harsh off a single post. I don't think it is. Labeling passion and love for your work "tech fetishism", is spiritually bankrupt. Mind you we're in general here not talking about people working in a mine to survive, which is a different story. But people who do have a choice in their career, doing something they have no love for solely to add more zeros to their bank account? That is the fetish , that is someon…

> Like how devoid of curiosity do you have to be to do something half your waking life that you don't appreciate if you're very likely someone who has the freedom to choose?

Do you understand work-life balance? I get paid to do the job, I satisfy my curiosities in my free-time.

> But people who do have a choice in their career, doing something they have no love for solely to add more zeros to their bank account?

Because I doubt finding a well paying job that you love is something that is achievable in our society, at least not for most people.

IMO, the real fetishization here is "work is something more than a way to get paid" that's a corporate propaganda I'm not falling for.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#144

Post by ge96 »

strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

I'm working on the second project handed to me that was vibe-coded. What annoys me assuming it runs is the high number of READMEs which I'm not even sure which one to use/if applicable.

They are usually verbose/include things like "how to run a virtual env for python"

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#145

Post by isaacremuant »

aeblyve wrote: post #115

This process has been affecting most of the world's workers for the past several centuries. Programming has received a special treatment for the last few decades, and it's understandable that HN users would jump to protect their life investment, but it need not. Hand-coding can continue, just like knitting co-exists with machine looms, but it need not ultimately maintain a grip on the software productive process. It…

This is so funny to me.

Hand-coding is no longer "the future"?

Did an AI write your post or did you "hand write it"?

Code needs to be simple and maintainable and do what it needs to do. Auto complete wasn't a huge time saver because writing code wasn't the bottleneck then and it definitely is not the bottleneck now. How much you rely on an LLM won't necessarily change the quality or speed of what you produce. Specially if you pretend you're just doing "superior prompting with no hand coding involved".

LLMs are awesome but the IDE didn't replace the console text editor, even if it's popular.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#146

Post by Macha »

Etheryte wrote: post #89
strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

In my opinion this is another case where people look at it as a technical problem when it's actually a people problem. If someone does it once, they get a stern message about it. If it happens twice, it gets rejected and sent to their manager. Regardless of how you authored a pull request, you are signing off on it with your name. If it's garbage, then you're responsible.

The problem is leadership buy in. The person throwing the LLM slop at github has great metrics when the leadership are looking at cursor usage, lines of code, PR numbers, while the person slowing down to actually read wtf the other people are submitting is now so drowning in slop that they have less time to produce on their own. So the execs look at it as the person complaining "not keeping up with the times".

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#147

Post by carlosjobim »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #125
whynotminot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone who likes solving problems choose a very lucrative career path solving problems… hmmm You can also solve problems as a local handyman but that doesn’t pad the 401K quite as well as a career in software. I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to…

> I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to pay bills, not because it’s our burning passion. I would claim that I love coding quite a lot. The problem is rather that my bosses and colleagues don't care about what I love about it. It is rather appreciated if you…

Very level-headed comment. I'm one of those who sees programming as a means to an end and nothing else.

If I order something to be delivered, I don't care what model of car the delivery company uses. Much less what kind of settings they have for the carburetor needles or what kind of oil they're using. Sure, somebody somewhere might have to care about this.

That's also how people like me see programming. If the code delivers what we need, then great. Leave it be like that. There are more interesting problems to solve, no need to mess with a solution which is working well.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#148

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

> All while the author—who clearly only skimmed their “own” code—is taking no responsibility, going “whoopsie, Claude wrote that. Silly AI, ha-ha.”

Now I don't do code reviews in large teams anymore, but if I did and something like that happened, I'd allow it exactly once, otherwise I'd try to get the person fired. Barring that, I'd probably leave, as that sounds like a horrible experience.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#149

Post by aleph_minus_one »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #36
greymalik wrote: post #27

> One could only wonder why they became a programmer in the first place, given their seeming disinterest in coding. To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself. > careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.

The point of most jobs in the world is to "solve problems". So why did you pick software over those?

> The point of most jobs in the world is to "solve problems". So why did you pick software over those?

Because in a lot of jobs where you (have to) solve problems, the actual problems to solve are rather "political". So, if you are not good at office politics or you are not a good diplomat, software is often a much better choice.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#150

Post by Barrin92 »

0x457 wrote: post #143
Barrin92 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A bit harsh off a single post. I don't think it is. Labeling passion and love for your work "tech fetishism", is spiritually bankrupt. Mind you we're in general here not talking about people working in a mine to survive, which is a different story. But people who do have a choice in their career, doing something they have no love for solely to add more zeros to their bank account? That is the fetish , that is someon…

> Like how devoid of curiosity do you have to be to do something half your waking life that you don't appreciate if you're very likely someone who has the freedom to choose? Do you understand work-life balance? I get paid to do the job, I satisfy my curiosities in my free-time. > But people who do have a choice in their career, doing something they have no love for solely to add more zeros to their bank account? Beca…

>Because I doubt finding a well paying job that you love is something that is achievable in our society,

Which is why I stressed twice, including in the part you chose to quote, that I am talking about people who can achieve that. If you have to take care of your sick grandmother, you don't need to feel addressed.

But if you did have the resources to choose a career, like many people who comment here, and you ended up a software developer completely devoid of passion for the craft you're living like a Severance character. You don't get to blame the big evil corporations for a lack of dedication to a craft. You don't need to work for one to be a gainfully employed programmer, and even if you do and end up on a deadbeat project, you can still love what you do.

This complete indifference to what you produce, complete alienation from work, voluntarily chosen is a diseased attitude.

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