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Be nice to programmers

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Re: Be nice to programmers

#141

Post by GimbalLock »

herval wrote: post #75
freework wrote: post #4

This brings up an interesting concept. All great creators (artists, programmers, woodworkers, hairdressers, etc) tend to be more pessimistic than optimistic. If you attitude is "Wow this program I wrote is totally awesome, I deserve a pat on the back", then you'll never improve upon your program and you'll end up never improving your skills and will end up a rosh katan[1]. You have to be the kind of person who sees e…

"I deserve a pat in the back" is not an optimistic attitude... It's self-indulging, that's all. Optimists see bug reports as a way to improve things. Optimists bet on early tech because they see a bright future ahead (rails 0.9? ios 2.0?). Being pessimistic will only feed your ulcer...

I definitely agree with you on this. Optimism and arrogance are vastly different.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#142

Post by Evbn »

Legion wrote: post #139
dsr_ wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. I'm a sysadmin. Do you know when your sysadmins are doing the job right? When you don't notice. The only possible way for a sysadmin to get noticed is to screw up.

Sysadmins are the offensive linemen of the tech world.

A conpetent BOFH has many offensive lines always at the ready, indeed.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#143

Post by Evbn »

krenel wrote: post #120
dasil003 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can walk over to someone else's cubicle can't you?

Not really. I have been developer of VoIP application for about one an a half year and our clients only call us when they have a problem. Conectivity problems, delays in the audio when doing calls (due codec errors), problems with NAT, problems with the voice mails, etc... If everything is fine you just see no errors on logs and a beautiful graph expressing the increase of number of calls every month. Anything else.…

VOIP is the best! When your clients have a problem, they can't call you!

Re: Be nice to programmers

#144

Post by Evbn »

irishcoffee wrote: post #56
AerieC wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is true of any "producing" profession. Any time you're creating something and "putting it out there", there's going to be a huge stream of criticism from every direction. Artists, writers, musicians, engineers, carpenters, etc.--all of their work is constantly under scrutiny by "the customer" and/or "the boss". Even non-producing professions have to deal with constant scrutiny of their performance and negati…

There is not a discrete "brokenness" to things like art or music. What you ship works or it doesn't work. Nobody knows or cares about the mountains you moved to produce what you did, they only care about the parts that don't work. Some industries are absolutely comparable, but a much smaller number than I think you're implying.

Ahem. http://www.psdisasters.com/

Re: Be nice to programmers

#145

Post by cwilson »

Have you ever done fundraising for a startup? To raise 1m - 2m dollars, you will on average talk to between 20 - 40 different investors during the seed round. At least half of these discussions will end with a "no". This is not a good feeling, because this "no" represents someone who has the ability to enable your company, your co-founders, your vision, your dreams, and even your employees to have a future. Being told "no" is incredibly difficult to hear in the early stages of a building a company.

My point is that being an entrepreneur, regardless of your role, is not always easy. Controlling your own destiny means you get the good and the bad; you're never shielded from the stuff that's hard to swallow. While I feel for this particular situation, I don't think other roles in a startup have it any easier.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#146

Post by jgh »

majormajor wrote: post #108

Among all the non-programmers I've talked to about work, I've never found one who doesn't have to deal with some sort of constant, repetitive negative feedback. Teachers have to deal with some kids that simply won't stop acting out, and who continually perform poorly on assignments (not to mention parents happy to tell them everything that the teacher is doing wrong). The salespeople have countless deals they fail to…

I agree with you. I feel like this article is pretty melodramatic. I've been a (professional) programmer for the better part of 10 years and I've had my share of ups and downs, but this job is definitely a very, very good one. The sheer amount of freedom we get from a) the good pay and b) the fact that programmers are so in-demand right now that companies bend over backward for us really can't be matched in many other jobs.

The lamenting in this article is from somebody with very little perspective on what most people have to do just to survive.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#147

Post by Evbn »

wam wrote: post #123
greenyoda wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was addressing what the parent comment (from peeters) insightfully observed about the original article's four-step workflow description: getting to the next bug and fixing it could either be thought of negatively ("damn, I have another bug in my code") or positively ("I've solved this problem and made some forward progress"). Whether you find this negative or positive is a function of your mental state. This is ana…

The author explicitly says that fixing bugs feels good. But the point (as I see it) is that the workflow often obscures the larger positive goals of the endeavor and tends to burn people out, and that's a net negative. You can argue that it shouldn't, but I don't think you can argue that it doesn't. Everyone wants to be that 3rd happy mason. But that story doesn't tell you how to do that, it just suggests that it's a…

The story tells you explicitly. Don't stare at your watch, think about the product vision.

Every day I go to work to fend off spies who want to steal your data. Protecting the powerless, defending your freedom! I will never meet you, and I will never even look at the treasure I am defending, and most of time is spent fixing broken configs, but I am doing it for a good cause, and at the end of the month I enjoy my paycheck too.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#148

Post by Evbn »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #98

I went to a tradeshow for my company a few weeks ago, where I got to just interact with potential customers all day. I had an absolute blast, by the end of the day where the other folks on the team were tired and ready to leave (I was the only developer), I was pumped and already thinking of how to come across even better to clients at the next day of the show. It made me realize how programming has adversely affecte…

Need more quality time walking, talking, and talking to people.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#149

Post by Sakes »

hollerith wrote: post #129
Sakes wrote: post #34

This guy has not discovered what it means to be a programmer, he is simply in a phase of his programming life. Chasing down bugs all the time? Why? I don't do this, and when I run across a bug it is usually a quick fix and not a big deal. The goal is not to write it perfectly without bugs. The goal is to release it perfectly without bugs, and to do this all you have to do is test your code often as you make changes t…

>if you are running into bugs that take you 4+ hours to resolve, you simply have not been programming long enough. Firefox had a memory leak that took years to track down and eliminate, so according to your logic Firefox does not have any employees that have been programming long enough.

Well, I was speaking generally when I wrote that. I probably should have put in the word frequently to be more specific. I did not mean to imply that one day you will reach a point where you will never battle with a bug for over 4 hours again! But in my defense, I did write run into bugs and not bug.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#150

Post by kirbysayshi »

smacktoward wrote: post #70
praptak wrote: post #18

Try your hand at security and come back to appreciate the optimism and positivity(#) pervading the programming world. (#)relative.

Indeed. Or go work on software for manned space vehicles, or medical devices, or huge financial institutions, or anywhere where the consequence of bugs is "people die" or "national security is compromised" or "society collapses" or the like. I wonder if you couldn't formulate a rule to the effect of the more serious the task you are working on, the less you can afford to be optimistic. When Serious Things are on the…

Something that struck me from your comment is that yes, there are more serious repercussions than others. The problem here is that the pressure and feedback from those repercussions is relative, and knowing this makes it especially difficult to accept tons of negativity. If a bug caused someone to die, and this was preventable (i.e. obviously your fault) then yes, you should feel horrible. Most of our jobs though, involve loss of money, not loss of life. The pressure to fulfill these tasks is therefore completely constructed. Success or positive feedback is simply that the people paying you continue to make money, the status quo continues.

Being optimistic or pessimistic isn't quite relevant when people's lives are on the line, I think it's more about being _realistic_. Everything can fail, and everyone makes mistakes. This is reality. When people can die, there is much more impetus to pay (time and money) for everything to be triple-checked and triple-redundant.

But in pretty typical software development, that money and time isn't there. And the feeling of knowing you could have done better, if only given a chance, is horrible and eats away at your resolve. Then you wonder, "well perhaps I'm not fighting strongly enough," or "People are coding for space shuttles, and I can't even get this page to load!"

I believe it's a human right that your individual problems are no greater than another's, because it's relative. If you feel about it strongly enough, then it's valid. Saying it's not because people's lives aren't at risk is invalidating the human right of pursuit of happiness.

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