AWS is a stupid simple GUI mate....
The Developer's Dystopian Future
181–190 of 209 posts
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#182One thought that soothes me a bit when I think about my future as a (relatively young) web developer is to remember that there is currently plenty of demand for 'greybeards' in companies that use older technologies or companies (even some startups?) that understand the value of developers with a lot of experience, or a particular skill-set.
I fully expect that especially the latter will be realized by more and more (web) companies by the time I'm an old-timer.
That said, I do understand it might be a little bit harder to find the kind of work/location situation I want. But considering that right now I have ridiculous freedom of choice in that regard, I can accept the idea that this might not last forever.
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#183Honest, 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…
"They left work and played volleyball and worked on their tuner car and went to family events and so on. They learned exactly what was specifically necessary for their job today and tomorrow. Never beyond. Most of them were 20-ish year olds." Any idea what happened to your colleagues?
Most of them are (if not all...I can't think of a single one who isn't) still developers. Few have made any great impact, and most have had the "people get hired in as my boss" experience a number of times.
But they're still in the industry, doing a job, getting paycheck, and supporting a living.
Our industry is rather unique in that way that it's a 24/7 job for some, even at the lowest tiers.
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#184Earlier 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?
I love HN. In response to a complaint about learning new frameworks, you suggest three other alternatives.
I think the difference is not just that these are languages rather than frameworks, but also that each of these teach you different skills and approaches by their nature (that aren't 'new', so clearly have a stood the test of time).
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#185I'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…
HN is the worst possible place for you to spend your time.
A constant stream of new ideas - many of them not worth the bits they're stored as - punctuated by periodic tales of extreme success and extreme failure. It doesn't cover the in-betweens - yet the in-between is where 99% of the rest of the world's software developers live.
Someone like you, who had the natural drive and curiosity to start programming at 11 and dive into C++ sooner after, will never be obsolete.
Find what you like in the field. Learn it well. Accept that what you like may change and that you'll be inclined to learn something else down the road. Things that interest you today may not tomorrow; and things that seem out of reach today you may find coming to you as naturally as breathing tomorrow.
Most industry professionals don't chase after every new trend - we learn the fundamentals well, we pursue the things that interest us and let go of the things that don't. We even have time in our lives for things that aren't technology, yet we manage to progress in our careers as software engineers. (I would say making time for those things is critical to retaining your enjoyment of technology as you get older.)
My contact info is in my profile; feel free to shoot me a message if you want to talk further.
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 27, used to be in tech like the biggest nerd of them all. But not anymore, frankly I'm tired of all of the changes that happened in the industry - it's not that I'm tired of learning but it's that the changes lack substance. 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 imp…
They may come and go in the small bubble of blogs you read, but the real world works very differently. Heck, I work with Perl on a regular basis. Not for some amateur web pages but for real, important, back end stuff. What matters is that the code is solid, not how many new blogs are started on the subject. Remember that the ones who get things done in the world does not blog about it. No blogs chronicled how they ch…
> Remember that the ones who get things done in the world does not blog about it.
Perhaps not necessarily true. I don't blog as often as I used to but I still get things done. The act of writing helps to strengthen and reinforce good ideas and train one to recognize them in the future. Publicly or privately matters little... but some of us do "blog."
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#187A question for the intersection of Python and Clojure people, is a generator kinda like a lazy sequence from Clojure? Or is that wrong or is there more to it?
Yes, I'm well aware looking at the dates that python generators came a bit before clojure lazy sequences BUT I personally learned Clojure lazy sequences first.
What I'm getting at that's relevant is the OP article author needs to tune up his analogy engine. The older I get the more "I've seen this before and know exactly what to do". As long as I can draw (hopefully correct) analogies, I can learn something very quickly.
I don't know any Python at all, and 2 or 3 minutes of google searching implies a python generator is like a clojure lazy seq, so if I'm on the right track, I'm doing well.
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#188So I'm in the 40+ crowd, and things are different from when I was a 20-something. But learning new stuff isn't a problem. I pulled Angular into the new project I'm building at work. I've moved from C to C++ to Java to Python and am now playing with Racket (Python generators have nothing on define-syntax :). My point is not to say I'm better than the author. I'm nothing special. My point is that there isn't a magical…
"My hunches have gotten better" is perhaps the best description of the value of experience. I am 38 myself, and sometimes, when I am surrounded by a new batch of fresh 20-somethings, I feel a little like the author of the original article. They need only a couple of hours to understand a new framework or tool to an extend that I feel would take me days or weeks. And they think nothing of burning the midnight oil for…
That always amazed me when I worked with younger peers. They could pick up the new JS framework/build tool/library-du-jour and whip together an amazing, reactive, fluid GUI in an afternoon. I'd try to cobble together a simple, "Hello world!" with the same technologies and throw my hands up after a few days proclaiming it to be the worst invention since the dust-jacket.
But I taught them about unit testing, data structures, and algorithms. In return for making their programs easier to maintain and faster they answered my dumb questions about crazy JS frameworks. Eventually I did get, "Hello world!" to appear in my browser screen.
I often wonder why it's so complicated but they assure me it's for good reasons.
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#189The author specifically mentions Angular - probably that was the last straw. I want to tell you: I feel your pain! You are not alone! I've been in the field for almost 35 years, and I think I've seen a lot. But Angular really stands out. It's absolutely the worst kludge ever unleashed into the field with so much hype, I can't remember anything like this since EJB, but EJB is a nice piece of engineering compared with…
Funny you mention that. Just today I was doing some research about Angular, Ember, Backbone, etc. The fundamental question I was trying to address was, why would one need a client-side MVC framework in the first place? After reading several lengthy articles, as well as looking at some documentation, I just couldn't grasp it. They all seem... off.
Try to imagine a larger project, an entire site running client side with just API end points on the server. Each framework you mentioned has a different approach, but they all try and tackle the task of organizing the heavy client side setup. If you did that project without those frameworks, you would end up writing most of a framework of your own.
Re: The Developer's Dystopian Future
#190That's not a dystopian future.
I appreciate the honesty. I've spoke with my developers faced with the same situation. The common theme is that they have better things to do. That's fine too. Not everyone is interested in digging into combinatorial algorithms and why should they be? We all have varying levels of interest in the field. It only seems reasonable that you should be able to use what you need of it to get your tasks done.
You certainly don't need the plethora of front-end frameworks and tools to make a good site today. Those tools are great when you need them for large, modular user interface applications. It's still as easy today as it was ten years ago to set up a dynamic web site. PHP is still around if that's your game and there's no shame in using it. Use what works and get it done.
Nobody is going to take away your license.
I'm 32. I still love programming. I go through morose periods where I lament the lack of innovation and ingenuity that the industry had in spades while I was growing up. Settling into a world of incremental improvements and watching the end of Moore's law approaching is disturbing. However I can't stop. It's what I do. But instead of focusing on new frameworks or languages I have moved more towards pure mathematics and finding applications or links to computer science. Knuth's work has been taking on new dimensions for me in recent years. I've obsessively digested everything that Sussman, Friedman and Felleisen have written. I've meditated on the ANSI C specification and the CLHS. I enjoy talks on the nature of computing and speculation about the future. It's an exciting field for me that is just ripe with fruit.
That said it's also healthy to encourage an interest in other things as well. My daughter. Literature. Music. Chemistry. Electronics... these are my digressions. I always come back to programming though.