The Developer's Dystopian Future • Hacker News Board

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#141

Post by visarga » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:30 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #112

sriku wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the lovely things about being older is having the confidence to be able to be able to point out that the latest fad is just a warmed-over rehash of something old. Sane advice. I'm 39, and I'm rather stunned to see 27yr olds calling themselves "old" and disillusioned with tech and what not ... let alone 17! If you like to build things, hone your system level thinking .. which lasts longer than Angular/Backbon…

I'm in my 50s, and I'm having a ton of fun with this new stuff. After burning out at a startup that did everything in 68000 assembler (nice architecture...) in my 20s I'm getting back to dev work now and finding I still have aptitude and curiosity. There is a lot happening. But the change has barely has started yet. I can see hints of new shapes coming over the horizon, and anyone who thinks they're going to be needi…

I think Machine Learning will become much more common place. It's a radically different approach.

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#142

Post by ufmace » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:31 AM UTC

thegeomaster wrote: post #25

I'm not even legally an adult, and I feel like things are moving too fast for me. At 17 years. I guess I shouldn't feel like that, but I can't help it. I started with VB6 as a kid, 6 years ago. I moved onto C++, then learned about 3D graphics and game engines, then learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, gotten into web development, learned Photoshop, some basic design, working with Linux, PHP, a little of C#. Recently tinker…

I'm over 30, and been working in the industry for ~6 years now, and I say don't worry. Yeah, there's segments of the software world that push out new frameworks and languages at a breakneck pace that nobody could keep up with. There's no reason why you need to know them to work, though. The vast majority of developers out there are working in time-tested languages and frameworks. C++, C#, and Java for most of the enterprise and big business world. Most of the web work that uses any other language is Perl and PHP. There are jobs out there in the latest cool stuff, but they're a small fraction of the overall market. I haven't really worked with that side of the industry, but I'd have to guess that any company there knows that they aren't going to find many people on the market that already know their stack, and so will be open to teaching you.

Don't worry about trying to keep up with the latest stuff. Do pick a language and framework, and go build something in it. Make it do something useful and solve somebody's problems. A proven ability to execute on a business idea is worth far, far more than knowing the latest languages and frameworks off the top of your head.

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#143

Post by eru » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:51 AM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #139

eru wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Perhaps you should look into Haskell, Clojure or Erlang for a change?

In the context of web applications, what do Haskell or Clojure bring to the table that makes them worth the learning curve?

In the context of noname123's post they bring interesting learning to the table: they are not more of the same with renamed keywords. To quote,

> [...] it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped.

Haskell _is_ digging deeper into the discipline.

I am sure one can make good arguments for some of the Haskell and Clojure frameworks for web applications. Alas, I am not qualified. I only used Haskell professionally for embedded development, and for rapid desktop application development, but I've never done web development seriously.

In any case, the Haskell answer for web development will probably include what all Haskell advocacy ever includes: purity and the strong static typing.

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#144

Post by visarga » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

sien wrote: post #105

mtct wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop follow hacker news and you will rapidly recover from this illness. Source: Me, someone that see COBOL all day and still live happily after that.

Exactly. I work in a similar place. IMS and COBOL is all over the place. Delphi is too. I maintain mostly C code written 20 years ago. It pays better than any job I've had previously with up to date technology stacks. A bunch of mates are Coldfusion coders. Now they are in demand because all these odd places have legacy CF code they have to deal with. In 10 years time all over the place will be piles of Angular, Node…

I loved Delphi 15 years ago. It was WISWIG, click on a button, write an event handler, drag and drop components, it even generated some boilerplate code for me. That was bliss. I learned how to do event driven UI's back then. Today I use jQuery much the same way, but without the nice RAD. Is there a Delphi-esque RAD for JavaScript?

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#145

Post by Ixiaus » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 6:03 AM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #139

eru wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning a new framework that does the same thing like layout or user design; it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Perhaps you should look into Haskell, Clojure or Erlang for a change?

In the context of web applications, what do Haskell or Clojure bring to the table that makes them worth the learning curve?

Ignoring the joy of writing software with much more powerful abstractions for a moment (Python, Ruby, JS, PHP all look like jalopies now compared to Haskell) out has very real industrial benefits:

Write software faster with fewer bugs, easier to maintain down the road because the "mental model" is maintained in the types by the compiler, it's more succinct, it's fast, some of the world's brightest computer scientists work on it, and so on...

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#146

Post by eru » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 6:05 AM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #58

thegeomaster wrote: post #25

I'm not even legally an adult, and I feel like things are moving too fast for me. At 17 years. I guess I shouldn't feel like that, but I can't help it. I started with VB6 as a kid, 6 years ago. I moved onto C++, then learned about 3D graphics and game engines, then learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, gotten into web development, learned Photoshop, some basic design, working with Linux, PHP, a little of C#. Recently tinker…

Relax. A lot of those technologies will be dead. And you should be intimidated by angular and ember. They have the smell of Enterprise Java for me. Learn paradigms and principles. If you know what to do, you will be able to find the tools to do it. Its a bit like cooking - the cookbooks for the peasants give recipes. The ones for the chefs give mechanics and techniques. So learn pointers, functional programming, asyn…

> Its a bit like cooking - the cookbooks for the peasants give recipes. The ones for the chefs give mechanics and techniques.

See eg http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/d...

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#147

Post by Ixiaus » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 6:13 AM UTC

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #42

thegeomaster wrote: post #25

I'm not even legally an adult, and I feel like things are moving too fast for me. At 17 years. I guess I shouldn't feel like that, but I can't help it. I started with VB6 as a kid, 6 years ago. I moved onto C++, then learned about 3D graphics and game engines, then learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, gotten into web development, learned Photoshop, some basic design, working with Linux, PHP, a little of C#. Recently tinker…

To see a young person say this bolsters my opinion that technology is moving too fast. Everybody is in such a rush to learn new frameworks, new languages, new toolsets; nobody is learning how to actually _program_. I've worked with people who looked down on me for not knowing WeekOldFramework, but who couldn't architect a simple CRUD application to save their lives. I feel like so many developers have this "quantity…

It isn't moving to fast. New library x is like going from PHP to Python, true holistic understanding and a grasp of theory goes a long way to enable someone to look past the superficial differences and focus on the substance - everything else falls into place.

It's also not about learning to Program, that's like saying to an adult that knows how to write, learn how to write! That doesn't improve their writing.

It's about thinking. Structured languages (like those used for programming) are Yet Another medium for translating Thought. Learn to think better, learn better tools that enable better thinking (Haskell, Idris, Mercury, etc...)

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#148

Post by p1esk » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 6:19 AM UTC

ascendantlogic wrote: post #123

personZ wrote: post #11

Honest, legitimate post that I very much enjoyed. However I do think posts like this feed in ageism. I say this because it posits that the change is that the author is older and has more things to do, therefore they've fallen out with technology. The take-away invariably being that people who are older and have more things to do have fallen out with technology, whereas the young are still with it, whatever it is. Let…

"However I do think posts like this feed in ageism" That was my exact thought after I read this as well. I'm 36 and starting to feel the creeping fear of being seen as "too old" to do what I do. People posting "I did PHP for 15 years and don't get Python and don't want to learn DevOps and AWS is so confusing" sounds like a senile old man complaining about the good old days. If you want to be marked as a crotchety old…

You're never too old to "do what you do", unless you have nothing to show for it. Have you written software that others find awesome and useful? Are you still capable of writing such software? If so, you have nothing to worry about.

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#149

Post by chrisdew » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 6:41 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #143

doktrin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of web applications, what do Haskell or Clojure bring to the table that makes them worth the learning curve?

In the context of noname123's post they bring interesting learning to the table: they are not more of the same with renamed keywords. To quote, > [...] it's not like learning music and digging into a deeper discipline like moving from acoustic strumming to jazz improvisation, it's just learning new keywords to do the same crap because the old keywords have been remapped. Haskell _is_ digging deeper into the disciplin…

How do you Haskell on embedded systems? Are you talking about baremetal with 1-32K SRAM?

Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future

#150

Post by capisce » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 6:48 AM UTC

frozenport wrote: post #7

Your dystopia should include the millions of engineers India graduates each year. In many ways the difference between these groups and US groups is the technology curve, US group offer cutting edge technology while Indian company will build Java backends with awt. If you fall behind the tech curve you might be outsourced.

I think a lot of the fear of not keeping up might be connected to the fear of not being able to make money on something you enjoy doing.