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Software engineers hate code

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Re: Software engineers hate code

#161

Post by jvm___ »

soneca wrote: post #34
JohnFen wrote: post #8

> This is the best-kept secret of the software engineering profession: engineers hate code. Especially code written by other people. It's why they love working on greenfield projects so much. No code, no maintenance, no headaches! Except that I've met lots of engineers who were the opposite. They hate greenfield projects and prefer maintaining existing code. I noticed this broad division of personality early in my ca…

I am one of those who prefer working on existing code. I like making things better, understanding how a code works is thrill, adding new features on existing premises. I am also an amateur fiction writer, and I notice the same thing in it. I like planning, but the first draft writing is a chore to me. An effort to vomit all my ideas as words. Then, I love rewriting. Revisiting what I wrote and improving it, fixing it…

How do you find job postings for these types of jobs? Any keywords to look for? And how do you interview for them?

I don't want level 3 support or on-call rotation, just established software that needs diagnostics, bug fixes and upgrades.

I guess you just have to apply and ask in the interview.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#162

Post by srcreigh »

jvm___ wrote: post #161
soneca wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of those who prefer working on existing code. I like making things better, understanding how a code works is thrill, adding new features on existing premises. I am also an amateur fiction writer, and I notice the same thing in it. I like planning, but the first draft writing is a chore to me. An effort to vomit all my ideas as words. Then, I love rewriting. Revisiting what I wrote and improving it, fixing it…

How do you find job postings for these types of jobs? Any keywords to look for? And how do you interview for them? I don't want level 3 support or on-call rotation, just established software that needs diagnostics, bug fixes and upgrades. I guess you just have to apply and ask in the interview.

My brother works for Birds Canada making 40k CAD a year. Got dropped into a 500-1M line Java codebase and asked to do site redesign and is now implementing SSO for them.

I recommended “Working With Legacy Code” and he read it.

His first job so great experience. I guess be underpaid is the answer.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#163

Post by mtippett »

To me, it isn't about the code itself, it's about communication, it's about a relationship with others through code, systems and architecture.

Using the relationship analogy, when you can hear something small from your partner and know what they are thinking, understand what they may do next it feels effortless.

When you look at some code, can you trust what the function name implies is done, without concern?

When something is complex in a relationship we pause to take time to communicate and come to a common understanding, we write notes to each other.

When we have something complex in code do we write down information to help the other engineers work through it?

In a lot of ways the way we relate to our peers through code is possibly a reflection of how we relate to others in life.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#164

Post by [deleted] »

srcreigh wrote: post #162
jvm___ wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find job postings for these types of jobs? Any keywords to look for? And how do you interview for them? I don't want level 3 support or on-call rotation, just established software that needs diagnostics, bug fixes and upgrades. I guess you just have to apply and ask in the interview.

My brother works for Birds Canada making 40k CAD a year. Got dropped into a 500-1M line Java codebase and asked to do site redesign and is now implementing SSO for them. I recommended “Working With Legacy Code” and he read it. His first job so great experience. I guess be underpaid is the answer.

[deleted]

Re: Software engineers hate code

#165

Post by wudangmonk »

coding123 wrote: post #140
ranting-moth wrote: post #83

Using a house analogy, I don't hate other people's houses. I hate it when other people blow a hole in the side of my house to put in a new window. They blasted a hole through two walls because it was the quickest way. Then just taped some plastic over the second hole. The project manager said it's still summer and we don't really need that wall at the moment. I know who will have to fix the wall when the winter comes…

it's not a good analogy when it's not realistic. How often are people walking down the street blasting holes in peoples houses to add windows?

I get the point but I do agree that it might not be a good analogy since when building structures people might disagree on where they should go but not on what a wall and a door are. In software your caretfully crafted "house" can just be a convoluted way to get from a to b to someone else.

To me writing a story comes closer to what writing software is. I can't just get an overview of their plans and know right away where I should be connecting the new "room" I want to build. Instead I need to understand what story the author was trying to get across and make my insertion in a way that makes sense with what was there before.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#166

Post by someweirdperson »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #111
partomniscient wrote: post #50

Software Engineers also hate sensationlist headlines/titles.

I think Hacker News shows that they love them.

Most people love to hate something. That and reproduction are the two main factors that govern almost all human behavior.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#167

Post by someweirdperson »

zerodensity wrote: post #128
revskill wrote: post #18

Writing "unreadable code" is easy, just as too easy to make your room a mess. Writing "readable code" is so damm hard. Readable code leads to maintainable code, which reduces tech debts. Alright, many engineers just knows how to fix the bug and call it a day. It's a disaster thinking.

I have heard of this magical beast "readable code" but have not yet encountered it in the wild.

Examples have been discussed here [0] before.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4331688

Re: Software engineers hate code

#168

Post by austin-cheney »

whstl wrote: post #112
snickell wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like SRE has afforded you a unique "who's writing what code small-org-wide" semi-impartial perspective. Thanks for sharing! I'm curious if the ~three devs that "wrote 80% of the codebase" mutually recognize one another? i.e. do you think they think of themselves as in a "writes a lot of code" category along with the other ~two devs? Do they think of themselves as "writes a lot of code"? Does management recogni…

When I was a developer I hated it. I was almost always the #1 in LOC, Jira Tickets, Scrum Points, you name it. I was naturally good at it, but the environment was always very competitive and the other top performers would brush it off as just me being lucky with "LOC Heavy" tasks. And it would piss me off that I would get paid the same as a guy who wrote 200 LOC a month and wasn't doing much more than those lines. Be…

As a developer I don't mind that other people don't do work. If they want to stagnate in their career that is their problem, but it certainly isn't a problem for me... until they make it my problem. This typically happens when entitlement sets in and the baseline lowers so dramatically that not doing work becomes a mandatory expectation only shattered by the crying when conveniences are peeled away.

Worse than that are the people who work their ass off, but just aren't good at it. I would rather work with people who prefer to not do work. The output is generally the same, but the people who work their asses off cannot see the difference and believe they somehow deserve more.

In my career the single biggest failure that I see repeated EVERYWHERE is confusion about what software really is. There is only one purpose to any of this: automation. In that mantra actually not doing work is supremely desirable so long as the output meets expectations.

Re: Software engineers hate code

#169

Post by gom_jabbar »

pdimitar wrote: post #160
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filching from Nietzsche, scriptwriters are lazy bums.

Pieces of art are repurposed all the time, I am sure Nietzsche took it from somebody living even further back in the past.

The eternal return of the same :)

Re: Software engineers hate code

#170

Post by zerbinxx »

intelVISA wrote: post #118
jacurtis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But for the other 85+% of people in the profession its basically a game of AdLibs This is so true. I work at a fairly small organization (~35 devs). Large enough to see roles form but small enough that I can tangibly see everyone's contributions. I work SRE, so I see lots of code from all the teams and ultimately talk to almost all the devs. In our impressive enterprise-level codebase (our SaaS product has average…

This is why the tech interview is still an unsolved problem (for non-tech ppl). How does a non-tech role sift through the 32 devs who did 10YOE flipping bools vs. the 3 that built the entire system? They'd look similar on paper and in superficial conversation.

This is the plague of hiring senior engineers, and one of the reasons we needed a new code test/challenge to get fewer bool flippers in our senior engineer hiring process. If you make them do something complicated/complex you get a lot more signal than if the test is bool flipping/a simple project from scratch
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