s/woodworking/3d printing/ and yeah, I feel ya.
Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
151–160 of 545 posts
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#152"The first monk asked: “Master... what has the bridge-builder learned from us?”
Said Kaimu: “Nothing yet. But when I touch a lit candle to the oil I sprinkled from my lantern during our crossing, he will learn the reason to plan for the absurd, the virtue of rebuilding in stone, and the wisdom of not insulting your customers.” - 0
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consistency is critical for reducing mental load when working as a team. Format your personal projects however you want, but when collaborating your editor should apply the standard format every time you save.
Maybe I'm not articulating my point very well. I absolutely agree that consistency, in principle, is usually a very good thing. My objection is to the idea that it's always a good thing, which it's not. Treating code formatting as rules rather than suggestions, in my experience, is a waste of time and unnecessarily tyrannical. In terms of mere code formatting, I don't buy that there's a meaningful difference between…
Arguing about what 5% is appropriate is a significant distraction. I do not believe that any benefits from allowing these discrepancies are superior to the reduced mental load in authoring, reading, and reviewing code of "the linter is automatic and true". If a rule can be written into a linter, simply have it automatically formatted and never argue about it again. It eliminates entire classes of argument.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> software engineers can't estimate how long something will take with any kind of accuracy. Sure we can, it's always one of: - A couple of minutes - Today - A week or two - Probably around a month - I have no idea, could be any of the above or more
At my work "It'll take half a day" has become slang for "I have no idea"
My standard reply is "one to two weeks".
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#155Most of the people I know who pursue creative/crafting hobbies alongside a software development job have chosen to work for well-known big companies, for prestige and safety, and ended up unfulfilled in their jobs. Most big companies are not good if you want to solve problems and build stuff. Especially "the enterprise", where software is seen as a cost center so the less of it the better. The effort of managing up e…
I think those people also are more likely to have the work life balance to pursue hobbies where most people doing fast growing/early stage startups are off balance. I personally don’t care what I spend my time on at work, I’ve found even when I enjoy the work, it doesn’t increase my fulfillment in life over the long term. So I try to optimize the life part of the ratio as much as I can, at times at expense of the work side of the ratio.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
You would basically never use an axe in woodworking. It's widely considered bad practice, produces unstable results, and there are better tools available
Well, I mean you could use an adze or a froe. Axes are really common in green woodworking (chair making) and they’re great for getting wood to split along the grain.
I second the green woodworking comment. An axe (and wedges) are a good way to hand-split logs into boards. And easier than doing it with a saw in some cases. Hand tool woodworking really makes you appreciate the multitude of weird old tools you find in antique stores and how clever people were when using human power before power tools.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#157I recently stumbled on a saying that resonated with me and is on this topic, “work with your mind, rest with your hands”
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing the boring job at all is a waste of 50+% of your waking hours? By all means, do it if it makes the remaining 50% more enjoyable, but I think it’s possible to have both. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
But you know, at the end there should be someone who is cleaning the toilets and taking out garbage. You eating the cake and having it is a bit selfish.
Why can't we just automate the terrible jobs out of existence? There's no good reason why we can't have a machine that cleans the toilet or takes your trash out to the street. Plus a self-driving machine that picks up your trash.
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#159Most of the people I know who pursue creative/crafting hobbies alongside a software development job have chosen to work for well-known big companies, for prestige and safety, and ended up unfulfilled in their jobs. Most big companies are not good if you want to solve problems and build stuff. Especially "the enterprise", where software is seen as a cost center so the less of it the better. The effort of managing up e…
At a level or two down from the abstraction of company size, crafting hobbies are also a reprieve from the tyranny of linters. So many programmers today believe that code is always better when it all looks identical. Consistency is a good thing, but not when it's expected to be absolute. Programming should actually allow for creativity, and where you decide to add spaces and newlines can actually add subtle but impor…
I curse the inferior linter formatting and at the same time would not have it any other way because why? Some diva would come in and put up a MR reformatting half the code base to their preferred way, mixed in with the actual change they are making and I would have to hunt for the actual changes in the reformatting noise. And then we would spend half a day arguing about it like in the good old days. Fast forward six months and there would be 6 different code styles in the codebase and it would just be terrible.
:deep breaths:
Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
#160There is a talk 'Programming With Hand Tools' by Tim Ewald, where the author explains why he uses hand tools (as opposed to electric tools) in his woodworking hobby and how this might be reflected back to programming.
I haven’t seen the talk but I think about this comparison all the time. Knowing how to use hand tools makes you keenly aware of your material. I was recently surprised to learned exactly what “against the grain” meant while trying to plane hard maple. This awareness translates into a more nuanced understanding of power tools and has made me a much better power tool woodworker. Understanding programming tools all the way down to bare metal has the same effect. I teach a computer security course where we look at a number of classic control flow attacks (eg, stack smashing). Students are simply unable to explain the behavior I show them until they get all the way down to raw memory dumps of programs.
The only downside to seeing this connection is that you’re constantly tempted to use idioms from woodworking to explain programming problems, which just confuses most people.