How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#191

Post by unnouinceput » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #88

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer I am in this profession (and it's been over 20 years) the less I see my peers as "dicks and idiots" but more as victims of the same broken game. I work with very smart people, to be honest. It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. Retiring sounds good right about now.

Retiring sounds good right about now. I'm with you. If I had another skill, I'd give up computers entirely. Maybe have a smartphone, and that's it. But only for limited use. I wish I could build things with my hands, or play an instrument, or just be good at something else, and let the tech world pass me by. I used to love technology because it was fun and interesting. It's no longer either of those things.

Play with electronics. Do embedded. Those go strongly together. Maybe you'll rediscover the love you had 20 years ago. Instead of giving up on the field do the opposite and go down the rabbit hole, maybe you'll like it there instead.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#192

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

By treating it as a job and not a hobby. You don't need to make work your life. While older programmers I've met certainly are more likely to do it in their free time, I think we're beginning the transition of a newer generation brought up with the fact that it's a career. There is so much to learn that it barely benefits you to do extra in you free time unless you are job hunting.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#193

Post by ser0 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

wffurr wrote: post #174

arjun-menon wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Retiring sounds good right about now. My personal plan, instead of retiring, is to work on inventing solutions to the issues plaguing large and complex software projects. One of my primary sub-goals under this mission, is to create a new programming language that'll handle complexity excellently, while also making it hard for a programmer to write bugs in it (strong static type system, deep static analysis, thoroug…

>> create a new programming language The problems with software engineering aren't technical. They are organizational, political, and cultural.

Agreed. A new language will not solve garbage in, garbage out problems. A lot of times even when a BA tries to untangle the mess of business practices by carefully documenting it and proving that a better way exists, some stakeholders can still find it challenging adapting to a well intended change.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#194

Post by haihaibye » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #172

overscore wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For almost exactly the same reasons as discussed above, I'm in the process of trying to move from software development to medicine. I'm currently a pre-hospital medical practitioner and work part-time in that field. My pay averages over the last year averages between 1/20th to 1/25th (0.05 to 0.04 times) my hourly pay as a software development consultant. I'm now trying to decide whether I should attempt a medical de…

I’m thinking of going back to school for Biology, but not sure. Have been thinking about it for a few years (getting older, seeing people around falling ill, and now the pandemic). Ultimately in Bioinformatics or Genomics. At least I can still utilize my technology knowledge than start from 0. Also, the pay is less than a normal software developer.

Larger bioinformatics groups often hire software developers with no biology credentials (just interest in the area)

Check out the uni job boards.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#195

Post by Chyzwar » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

Delk wrote: post #87

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer I am in this profession (and it's been over 20 years) the less I see my peers as "dicks and idiots" but more as victims of the same broken game. I work with very smart people, to be honest. It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. Retiring sounds good right about now.

> It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. What is it about those things that you find to be the problem? Genuinely asking.

- Culture of development People rarely know, even in ballpark what is performance of application until it is too late. We operate so high in abstraction that stuff mostly work by accident and people do not bother about putting daily server restart as a fix to bug. Technologies that are clearly bad are still widely used and teach at universities. Testing is either offloaded to manual QA testers or gamed by unit testing getters and setters. Architecture is decided by astronauts that not written line of code in a decade or by overhyped Junior watching conference talk.

- Employers Once the application is shipped to the production team is moved to a new project or contract is terminated. Day after said release you have a legacy system that over time will just get worse. Maintenance even in big tech companies is a problem (Google). Employers would either drive a hype train and re-write their systems every year or reject any attempt to modernize legacy app. Rarely companies invest into giving time and opportunities for people to learn new things. And finally Dead Sea effect combined with Price's Law lead to some truly dysfunctional teams.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#196

Post by gkop » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

shagie wrote: post #168

dmingod666 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternate perspective to this is. The great line of thought, that you are meant to 'follow your passion' and discover your true calling. There is a job mean for you and you just need to find it. I disagree with this and feel this thinking makes peoples lives miserable thinking they're somehow wasting their lives and makes people take plunges in life that they later regret. I feel there is space for an attitude tha…

There's a blog post from a CS Professor that I stumbled across a bit ago - Find The Hard Work You're Willing To Do - http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018... Its short, only a few short paragraphs - but it has one key piece that I've found myself oft quoting to people: > Maybe this is what people mean when they tell us to "find our passion", but that phrase seems pretty abstract to me. Maybe in…

This resonates and I would add, on the theme of managing complexity higher up in this sub thread, it’s rewarding to reduce entropy locally. Like, yes the complexity is overwhelming and a significant, even singular challenge — and also the individuals in the weeds have an opportunity to use creative means to subdue it to degree that is material to the sustainable success of their team, group, department, start up, etc..

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#197

Post by cunac » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #149

taf2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 20 years in as well... I think it’s still fun... it’s just a game of fixing things... the other game about how people interact is not as fun but still kinda interesting... game on old friend

"it’s just a game of fixing things" 25+ years in, I get little joy/fun from constantly 'fixing things' that shouldn't have needed fixing (or nearly as much fixing) had people planned ahead, or communicated, or tested, or just listened to the people they'd hired that do these things (plan/communicate/test/etc).

35+ years in and I am grateful every day that I do what I love. It is fun to make things tick.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#198

Post by rufus_foreman » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:28 PM UTC

syndacks wrote: post #145

WalterBright wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Retiring sounds good right about now. I tried that. After 6 weeks of watching TV I restarted my business and went back to work. Retirement is a living death.

Hey, thanks for sharing this. Mind expanding? I'm curious to hear what you had planned going into retirement and what you seek going back to work. Are you right back to the same as you were right before "retiring"? Knowing how your first round of retirement went, what would you have done differently in the years/decades leading up to it?

I tried it.

I figured out I can make a few dollars a minute sitting in front of a computer screen or I can make 0 dollars a minute sitting in front of a computer screen. Those are my two choices.

The choice is pretty clear.

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#199

Post by mb7733 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #177

mb7733 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that young people don't use hammers?

I wouldn't be surprised if most Gen Z people had never picked up a hammer in their life (Speaking as a Gen Z myself).

I'm missing something here. Why would hammer use be declining?

Re: How can you not be romantic about programming? (2020)

#200

Post by _zhqs » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

eigenhombre wrote: post #40

burntoutfire wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emotion is very important to me as a programmer. Often my emotions know when something isn't right before my "rational" mind does, hinting that it's time to slow down and dig deeper. I've found a number of bugs this way over the years. Sounds like intuition rather than emotions.

Yes, but I rely on my emotions to tell me when my intuition has something to pay attention to.

Maybe it’s a style/taste thing.