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Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#21

Post by dnautics »

amelius wrote: post #12
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

I think the problem is mixing terminologies: • Programmer: glues together existing tools (your example) • Software engineer/architect: builds/designs systems that can handle large loads efficiently; invents and applies techniques so the systems can become large while keeping them maintainable • Computer scientists: invents and analyzes algorithms That said, roles are usually mixed up as well, where a computer scienti…

I would say a true software engineer is someone that can design a system to meet a SLA, write documents which systematically show how it's measured and specced. Most software 'engineers' (including all but one of them with that title in my company) are just 'devs'.

My feeling is that a software architect is someone who can design something to try to meet an SLA but is too lazy (or too high level) to actually check it.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#22

Post by C1sc0cat »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

You are assuming the eveyone has your /our skills here.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#23

Post by C1sc0cat »

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #4
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

What you describe does not look like the typical software developer job at all. Certainly not anyone can write software. In fact, many who see themselves as "coders" are not very good at it themselves. Edit: I've found it's a bit similar to law in terms of skills and mindset. Some people struggle to follow the text of an actual law. Then, drafting an actual law is an even more specialised skill. In both software and…

I sometimes think drafting laws badly is a feature not a bug - after all think of all that lucrative legal work for other lawyers.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#24

Post by m_fayer »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

Sometimes I think the same thing about what I do. Then I work with a junior and appreciate the difference that a decade+ of accumulated knowledge, instincts, and intuition makes. Yes, most of us don't gain ability the way a surgeon or aerospace engineer might, it's not that palpable, but don't undervalue yourself nevertheless. It takes a lot of work and dedication to get to "I can reliably and predictably snap stuff together like legos and make a functional system."

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#25

Post by golergka »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #18
golergka wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing special, anyone can do it. That's what I'm thinking every day while I'm working and talking to other developers. But when I try to teach, or help non-coders who decide to take up coding, I am amazed every time to find out that there's one skill that I don't even think about that seems unteachable: structural thinking. I can teach a person how to get an input from a user. I can teach a person how to process…

I know good software engineers who believe in alternative medicines and doubt the efficacy of vaccines. I’ve met some that don’t even know the basics of how an OS or CPU works. We’re not special as a group. We’re good at some stuff and also really bad at other stuff. Just like everyone else.

Your comment seems to be written as if it's a counterargument to something I said, but it doesn't contradict anything in my comment and I completely agree with your point.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#26

Post by rxhernandez »

Tade0 wrote: post #16
krageon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some examples of places where you have seen this so I can avoid working there? It sounds incredibly boring.

Pick pretty much any front-end related position. Half of my career has been spent on such things and ironically this was the better paid one. Apparently doing interesting stuff comes with a pretty hard penalty in terms of compensation.

> Apparently doing interesting stuff comes with a pretty hard penalty in terms of compensation.

Yup, I'm trying to transition to web development strongly because of the much higher compensation and the ability to work remotely.

I admit developing nonlinear curve fitting frameworks, working with laser physics and doing biomedical algorithms engineering was much more fun and fulfilling. However, it's far more appealing to enjoy more time with my family, work from a peaceful location and never have to deal with traffic.

Though this transition to web development isn't at all helped by the fact that Javascript feels like it was a failed experiment in hell where it was probably deemed to be far too tortuous to be used as punishment; only god knows how Mr. Eich got his hands on it.

(I've professionally written code in Java, Python, Matlab, Fortran, C, Go and assembly and none of those languages come within two orders of magnitude of the disdain I have for Javascript)

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#27

Post by kitsunesoba »

amelius wrote: post #12
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

I think the problem is mixing terminologies: • Programmer: glues together existing tools (your example) • Software engineer/architect: builds/designs systems that can handle large loads efficiently; invents and applies techniques so the systems can become large while keeping them maintainable • Computer scientists: invents and analyzes algorithms That said, roles are usually mixed up as well, where a computer scienti…

Most positions I've worked sit somewhere between 1 and 2, involving quite a bit of glue but a good chunk of design work as well. Had there been no design component (glue alone) the produced software probably would have been functional in the strictest sense but would also have been a slow buggy mess.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#28

Post by scrollaway »

rxhernandez wrote: post #26
Tade0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick pretty much any front-end related position. Half of my career has been spent on such things and ironically this was the better paid one. Apparently doing interesting stuff comes with a pretty hard penalty in terms of compensation.

> Apparently doing interesting stuff comes with a pretty hard penalty in terms of compensation. Yup, I'm trying to transition to web development strongly because of the much higher compensation and the ability to work remotely. I admit developing nonlinear curve fitting frameworks, working with laser physics and doing biomedical algorithms engineering was much more fun and fulfilling. However, it's far more appealing…

You can do frontend webdev and have a lot of fun.

First of all, stop using plain JS and move to Typescript. That'll fix most of your issues with the language itself.

Second, for what's fulfilling, it depends on what you're actually working on. If you're going to just make dynamic menus for a wordpress blog then yeah, your life is gonna be boring. But nowadays "frontend" can mean writing entire apps. My latest site (https://overframe.gg/) is a SPA in React+Typescript and I had a lot of fun writing it. The nitty-gritty of reverse engineering games, simulating calculations, etc; all these are still there.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#29

Post by world32 »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

Can you give a real world example of glueing "together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings"? I've heard the idea that thats all software engineers really do before but it doesn't seem realistic at all.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#30

Post by wolfgke »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #6

Regardless of how accurate this portrait of programmer culture is, I must say that I welcome the attempt to create some positive PR. Our fellow nerds, doctors and lawyers, somehow got star treatment by hollywood, while our kind is usually portrayed as unattractive, awkward, laughing stock and at best a passive character in an assisting role. This tragically reflects on our perception in the real world.

There are people who quite like this outsider role.

Concerning the "Hollywood argument": if I think how Hollywood demands DRM in evermore standards and to infect your life, not being liked by Hollywood is one of the best advertisements for programming jobs that exist.

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