Glypha! I used to play that as a kid, I'm excited to check it out again.
Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
231–240 of 438 posts
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#232I've been working with Apple since 1986. I very much have enjoyed their ecosystem, and probably like them, for many of the same reasons that a lot of geeks hate them.
It's worked out OK, for me.
My first exposure to Apple personnel, were the MacHack conferences, of the late 1980s. Back then, Apple was still pretty "scruffy." Some of the T-shirts that showed up at MacHack are now silk-shirts at Apple.
Over the years, because of the companies that I've worked at, we have had pretty close relationships with Apple, and I have enjoyed interacting with many of their staff. I actually had a fairly decent window into their culture.
A few years ago, I finally left my last company (after almost 27 years), and started looking for work. During that time, I was contacted by Apple, and did a couple of interviews. They were probably the only company that I would have relocated for, in my fifties.
It didn't work out. As it turned out, and, quite surprisingly, I didn't mind that it fell through. The interviews made me aware that the culture was nothing like what I expected, and, I suspect, taking the job would have probably been a very bad move for me. I'm sure that the money would have been great, but I don't think I would have found the environment to my liking.
I'm one of those folks that isn't particularly interested in bucketloads of money. I really enjoy writing software as a craft. I'm quite aware that many folks, hereabouts, despise people like me, and that's sad. I feel as if a bit of the "soul" of software has been leached out.
But, at the same time, some very cool stuff has been accomplished (often, motivated by all that money), and I look forward to the future.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#233In 2 days time I'll mark my 27th year as a professional programmer (and just over 40 years since I started programming). I've worked in small companies, big companies, and mega-corporations. I've been a programmer, manager, team lead and CTO. And in doing so I discovered that I don't like managing people, I don't like meetings, and I don't like paperwork. I like long periods of focus. So I'm a software dev/architect…
I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets very difficult. I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the problems at home, etc. when they…
Hmm, interesting. I'm 39 and used to have amazing flow sessions in late 20s and early 30s but not seeing them much anymore. I can't tell if it's because of stresses of life or simply because I don't have enough time (with 3 young kids) to allow myself to fall into a state of flow. I really hope it's not stresses or my brain changing because I really valued those periods of focus.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I’m conditioned to have reduced respect for managers because in my experience they are former devs who were “promoted” out of touching the code. As a result, when they offer technical advice, it’s bad technical advice, or at best merely “unhelpful”, usually because it’s obvious (e.g. “did you try {first thing I tried}?” I pose that such people shouldn’t be devs or managers, but “manager” is a role that tends…
Those kinds of managers may not be coders but assuming they are actually good at managing (and know their limitations), they play an important role. It’s important to respect that other people are bringing different things to the table. Everyone’s got different strengths and weaknesses.
> It’s important to respect that other people are bringing different things to the table. Everyone’s got different strengths and weaknesses.
It is also important to respect that there are a lot of people that may bring something to the table, but not necessarily a whole lot. Sure, they'll have strengths and weaknesses and they are whole human beings with lives and people that love them, but this doesn't mean they are good at their job. And it also doesn't mean that they're good in a management or dev setting.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have known programmers who don't know how a float is represented in memory. I just can't comprehend how they can gloss over basics like that.
And why is that necessary knowledge? Don't get me wrong, once you go down to embedded you sometimes do need to know and sometimes it just improves your understanding (and it's kinda cool anyway), but if you do high-level work, perhaps web work, all you need to know is the abstract interface of floats as a data type. What operations you can do, what is guaranteed about the result of those operations (loss of precision…
Maybe not everyone needs to know, but for example it's important to know about it in ML. You can have overflow, underflow, non-deterministic addition when parallelised, or just need to speed up your network.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#236> I am not sure though if this is still the case for software engineers. Are there younger engineers, new to the career, for whom programming is not merely a job but something they can imagine doing in their spare time? I think I met a few as I was winding down my career. I do feel though that back around 1988 or so when I started getting serious into programming that all fellow programmers I met were also doing it w…
> replaced by a clock-in and clock-out mentality I started as a software engineer who was "passionate about software" and could see my life revolving around it. The change in my mindset towards this, that gradually happened few years ago, i.e. the "clock-in and clock-out mentality" is one of the best changes in my life! It always shocks me to see such sentiments from people. I mean how difficult is it for people to c…
Programming in your free time isn't "work", though. The people I've worked with who aren't programming in their free time have all been worse than the ones who did, which really isn't a big surprise.
It's not hard for me to understand why someone would want to only develop software during work hours, but that doesn't mean I have to force myself to like working with them as much as I like working with people who do engage with programming outside of work.
> I mean how difficult is it for people to comprehend that that are too many kinds of people out there and hence too many kinds of software engineers out there!
How difficult is it to accept that if you're not doing much to become better at your craft you'll also likely not be deemed as good as your peers who are? I don't know why people who admit to not caring as much as others about growing their skills and expressing enthusiasm about programming are so offended that some people would rather work with people who are doing those things.
All things being equal I'd rather work with someone who can tell me about their weekend project on Monday.
P.S.: If someone said "I don't like working with people who program in their spare time" that's also fine. We don't all have to like working with each other and pretending there is some kind of fairness equalizer that makes everyone as good as everyone else helps no one. If work is truly just work, just do your work and accept that some people don't like your attitude.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#237In 2 days time I'll mark my 27th year as a professional programmer (and just over 40 years since I started programming). I've worked in small companies, big companies, and mega-corporations. I've been a programmer, manager, team lead and CTO. And in doing so I discovered that I don't like managing people, I don't like meetings, and I don't like paperwork. I like long periods of focus. So I'm a software dev/architect…
Developers, or good ones at least, are puzzle solving junkies.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure what I want more anymore. I love these periods of flow, but I am so good at integrating other people's work, making them agree on the best while being happy and feeling productive. Also flow makes time fly and I feel I would just die very soon, heh. Anyone feeling this too? But I crave this feeling very much anyway.
This is my exact feeling :D I love coding and problem solving, but during my career I noticed that I'm _really_ good at getting technical people to communicate with each other and integrating their work. I try to do both, but I still don't know which I like more. I tried the full manager / chart drawing architect -route and I hated it. Just coding was a bit boring too in the long run, because I want to make an impact…
> I'm incapable of shutting up if I see any inefficiencies that could be improved by communication
This is one of my biggest struggles. I see so much flawed work and I can't help but voice my opinion, but I can't possibly dedicate time to try to fix it all, so I'm often afraid of just coming across as a complainer.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#239> But there is something becoming more familiar to me as I go back to the wild west of C programming (where very little happens behind the scenes I might point out - no garbage collection here!). I share this sentiment. I pursued computer science because of the romanticized notation of tracking every bit and byte and talking directly to the hardware. I know I'm not alone given the popularity of old-school fantasy con…
> It saddens me to say but if I were starting over today I might not enter the field professionally. Most modern development is gluing components together and wrangling packages. It's so far removed from the machine and the distance is only growing. I don't know what's sadder: That this kind of programming is becoming a lost art, or that nobody seems to care. I got my first job out of college partially because in the…
There's a bit of a renaissance here in Rust, or perhaps this is just my bias. Many people are drawn to the lack of a garbage collector and efficiency of the runtime code. Lots of packages optimize algorithms that are unlikely to be strictly necessary for the task at hand.
I think it will remain niche to care deeply about these things but they aren't forgotten. In my late 30s and finding this type of thing more and more fascinating despite working for companies building criminally inefficient software using Ruby and Python and dozens of microservices.
Re: Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to love the long periods of focus in my 20s, but ever since more life started happening, I can't do those anymore. It turns out my stress tolerance is incredibly low and when the life outside my work is not completely in order (like it rarely is after the 20s), being able to get into the flow state gets very difficult. I wish I was one of those people who could just forget the problems at home, etc. when they…
Hmm, interesting. I'm 39 and used to have amazing flow sessions in late 20s and early 30s but not seeing them much anymore. I can't tell if it's because of stresses of life or simply because I don't have enough time (with 3 young kids) to allow myself to fall into a state of flow. I really hope it's not stresses or my brain changing because I really valued those periods of focus.
I think it's your kids. They should be your priority for now. You really can get back to tech stuff later. Phases of life and all that.