Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software • Hacker News Board

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#191

Post by busterarm » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:47 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #159

ravenstine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry. Guilty party here. I used to be that diva at times, but also came around to your point of view after being on the other side of that several times myself.

But I think the biggest thing as I move up and spend more time reviewing code than writing it...style preferences make it so much easier to review code. Linters have given back years of my life at this point!

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#192

Post by noisy_boy » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:47 PM UTC

allen_berg wrote: post #142

krisoft wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming is fun, that is why you started doing it. For some. I certainly started that way. But many of my friends at Uni started from a different point. I heard many describing how they choose computer engineering because it is perceived as a good career or because they heard it pays a lot. I'm not sure if those people have the same "Programming is fun, that is why you started doing it." to fall back to.

A lot, most of the people actually who got into software for the past decade or so seem to have been motivated by money. They'd just as easily became doctors or lawyers. And it shows, a lot of software now is just some grey corporate kafkaesque mess.

I got into programming before the past decade and initially it was the lure of a good career i.e. money. But when attended my first class, I instantly knew that this was it. Sometimes the path isn't pretty but it can lead to beautiful places.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#193

Post by all2 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:48 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #183

DanielHB wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything you do 40 hours a week gets tiring eventually.

I haven't hit that stage yet. I mean, yes - work isn't fun. But I have coding side projects I work on, and it is fun for me, still!

I am very much this way. Greenfield dev on a project that's interesting is very engaging. Munging through thousands of lines of code trying to find the conditional or field that isn't being set properly, or that is being incorrectly accessed is draining.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#194

Post by alexfromapex » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:48 PM UTC

mhaberl wrote: post #68

> Even my last team leader sent me a message out of the blue saying “I think I’ll run a bar. I want to be a bartender and listen to other people’s stories, not figure out why protobuf doesn’t deserialize data that worked JUST FINE for the past three years”. I worked at a bar when I was young, listened to the stories; the most annoying protobuf deserialization issues or 'Agile meetings' are freaking fun compared to th…

The nicest part of working at the bar is when you leave the bar you're done working. Also, you don't need to get your drink pouring approved by another bartender that nitpick small details of what you did to boost their own ego.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#195

Post by agumonkey » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:49 PM UTC

mhaberl wrote: post #68

> Even my last team leader sent me a message out of the blue saying “I think I’ll run a bar. I want to be a bartender and listen to other people’s stories, not figure out why protobuf doesn’t deserialize data that worked JUST FINE for the past three years”. I worked at a bar when I was young, listened to the stories; the most annoying protobuf deserialization issues or 'Agile meetings' are freaking fun compared to th…

It's the timeless notion of "work". All the chaotic constraints thrown at one person: teammates, customers, tooling, psychology, politics.. they will turn anything into a slow boiling hell.

That said some domains are cleaner than others, just like small rivers have clearer water, I remember working in food stores or even mechanics and you don't get the same kind of fatigue as in software engineering. The stimulations are more diverse, a bit deeper (helps getting into flow in a way) and the culture helps (less discussion about shallow things like indentation). Fast food for instance, being a real-time thing requires tight planning and tight execution, no space for slack. It makes you sweat but you get seriously fast and good at your operations. Unlike coding where you can spin in circles for ages never get anywhere, and go home drained feeling useless.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#196

Post by CipherThrowaway » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #52

sukruh wrote: post #35

Most 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…

> Most places I've worked in the last 6 or so years are obsessed with tooling and add so many lint rules that it's often impossible to merge your pull request if you decide to format your code in a way that violates the rules in some trivial way.

Symptom of nothing better to do, I have found ;)

Hard to picture someone who values their time blocking PRs on tiny stylistic nits.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#197

Post by agumonkey » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:53 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #183

DanielHB wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything you do 40 hours a week gets tiring eventually.

I haven't hit that stage yet. I mean, yes - work isn't fun. But I have coding side projects I work on, and it is fun for me, still!

I keep reflecting on this, it's always when you get negative mismatch. Being forced to work with the wrong people (too negative, too angry, not motivated) or not having time to work on a good idea or good solution.

When you don't have to suffer these, you can work long, cause it's basically a kind of self fulfilling game.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#198

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

mhaberl wrote: post #68

> Even my last team leader sent me a message out of the blue saying “I think I’ll run a bar. I want to be a bartender and listen to other people’s stories, not figure out why protobuf doesn’t deserialize data that worked JUST FINE for the past three years”. I worked at a bar when I was young, listened to the stories; the most annoying protobuf deserialization issues or 'Agile meetings' are freaking fun compared to th…

[deleted]

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#199

Post by anonzzzies » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #182

anonzzzies wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many hallucinations because changes in fast changing libraries. It makes up functions that were removed and libraries that have been deprecated. With robust stuff that doesn’t happen. It is frustrating. Even copilot regularly includes some react lib that doesn’t work anymore for the past 3 years because it depended on old stuff that is full of security issues, bugs or doesn’t work on a new node etc etc. So then I…

It’s funny because a big draw of React is the sizable user base and library count, but that ends up being a double edged sword when using LLMs for codegen.

Well, if they are not up to date I guess with the latest; it changes so fast and there are so many examples of all different flavours of how to do something... I guess they will find a mechanism which will make newer info more relevant and older info more forgotten in some cases and also a way to draw in the latest all the time. My problem is more the not built/designed etc here issue; when you have a react WidgetBlah library and someone else also wrote one, there are reasons you rolled your own (often also not but ok), but why didn’t you keep the api the same. People talk about features here as a reason for breakage but when I compare a breaking feature change (for instance, a react component sig changed from one version to another) then I hardly ever see a reason why that was not made backward compatible. I have complained about this in many GitHub issues and the answer is usually ‘this way is better, just refactor it: it’s easy’. Sure it’s easy but it’s work and this happens a little too often. Sometimes I would like Java standard bodies and voting about api changes and this is one of those.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#200

Post by egypturnash » Fri, May 03, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

It's just nice to make physical shit with your hands, I've been a professional artist for a quarter of a century but it's been pretty much entirely digital. I've been fucking around with some canvases lately and I am making so many mistakes as I try to dredge up what I learnt about the physical process of painting thirty or forty years ago, but it's fun to get my hands dirty for a change.

And it's not just "it's more fun when you're not doing a thing for money", I certainly plan to try and sell these things when they're done, and I've relentlessly optimized the way I work for being fun to do. It's just really nice to be able to look at a physical thing and know that you made it.