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

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#241

Post by conductr » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #181

conductr wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if that task took 8 days you’d end up having to explain everything that happened and why it couldn’t be done in 1.

What would you rather - it took 8 days and you said it would take 1-8 days, or it took 8 days and you said it would take exactly 4 days ? In any case, there should be absolutely no problem explaining why it took 8 days if it really did.

> if it really did

The fact you even had to say that part points to the management problem at hand. Not only are you trying to keep idle time low, you're trying to estimate essentially unknown timelines, and you have to think about whether people are even telling the truth or padding hours where they feel they can.

I just think the range is too wide. Sure anything can be a 1 day task (potentially just an easy solution to add in, or some variables/settings to change, etc). And any 1 day task could be turned into an 8 day task (anything from refactoring unnecessarily, all the way to just walking the dog too frequently). I'm left wondering, how long should this task have taken?

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#242

Post by mym1990 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

I have seen a lot of my coworkers go into woodworking since 2020, and I can certainly see the appeal. Software is often so abstract and never truly tangible(in the sense that I can sit in it or hold it in my hands, and I mean the actual software, not the hardware its built on top of). It is extremely satisfying to build something out of a piece of wood and hold it/use it. To get started you really only need a hand plane, some chisels, clamps, and something to measure with...and add to your arsenal from there. On the flip side...my manager has been working on the same chest of drawers for what seems about 3 years now...so its a journey!

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#243

Post by mym1990 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:58 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #100

I don't think the difference is between software vs any other endeavor. I think it's working for a huge corporation vs a tiny one. If you feel drained by all the bullshit of your current development job, I'm guessing you work for a huge company. Start work at a <10 employee company, and see if you can find more job satisfaction there.

There are tradeoffs too though...large corporations can offer large problems to solve too, even though they will often be behind a bunch of red tape. Some people are well equipped to deal with that. Some people are okay with encountering the red tape, and waiting the 3 months for it to resolve...in the meantime you focus on other things, still get paid, and then go home and focus on hobbies/family/whatever. For the people that want to "move fast and break things"...yeah don't join a fortune 100/500 company.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#244

Post by digging » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #222

digging wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Code is not art, it's instructions. I'll slightly disagree here because code needs to be read by a computer and by your human teammates. There are times when I'm frustrated because prettier is making a necessary but unintuitive choice and causing my code to become harder to read. But those are rare, and I would never trade them for the guarantee of readable code the other >99% of the time.

Yes, this is fundamentally where I disagree with the person you're responding to and what seems like most programmers (or perhaps mostly web developers). If code is just instructions, it would look barely comprehensible to [most] programmers. Again, maybe I came off as more extreme than I actually am, because I think that consistent formatting is a very good thing most of the time, but that last 5-10% that programmer…

> What's also funny is that I've never worked anywhere that didn't have `eslint-disable` sprinkled everywhere. In many cases, these rules should be warning instead of errors, but because programmers love errors for some reason, virtually every rule violation needs to be an error.

Well I'm quite proud of having owned a certain repo at work which takes exactly this approach. If I have to disable a rule more than once, I take a good look at whether we need it at all, so we have extremely few `eslint-disable` comments in the entire codebase. It's one of the cleanest and most transparent codebases I've worked in -- but that's also an artifact of me spending long stretches working in it alone and having little oversight of how I spend my time. So there's a tradeoff :)

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#245

Post by switch007 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

_yb2s wrote: post #239

I don't understand why more adults don't have awesome hobbies... most of my childhood friends don't seem to do anything fun now as adults. I really love physical things I can do with my body as a counterbalance to working on the computer- weight lifting, woodworking, and sailing add a lot of value to my life, and have gotten me outdoors and in shape. I'm currently building a wood sailboat in my garage together with m…

If I could afford a bigger house with a big garden, shed, garage etc I'd definitely have way more hobbies like woodworking etc (UK here)

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#246

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, May 03, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

_yb2s wrote: post #239

I don't understand why more adults don't have awesome hobbies... most of my childhood friends don't seem to do anything fun now as adults. I really love physical things I can do with my body as a counterbalance to working on the computer- weight lifting, woodworking, and sailing add a lot of value to my life, and have gotten me outdoors and in shape. I'm currently building a wood sailboat in my garage together with m…

Yeah, sure can name a lot of friends that consume: mainly gaming and streaming.

Has the curve on the creator/consumer axis shifted in recent times or has it always been skewed toward consuming? Or is there instead a social axis that has been waning recently? I'm thinking of the once popular Bridge card game or bowling leagues as examples...

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#247

Post by colecut » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

_yb2s wrote: post #239

I don't understand why more adults don't have awesome hobbies... most of my childhood friends don't seem to do anything fun now as adults. I really love physical things I can do with my body as a counterbalance to working on the computer- weight lifting, woodworking, and sailing add a lot of value to my life, and have gotten me outdoors and in shape. I'm currently building a wood sailboat in my garage together with m…

If you inherited woodworking tools from your grandfather, I'm assuming that either your grandfather or father taught you some woodworking skills?

I grew up on the computer since I was a preteen. My dad moved 2000 miles away when I was 11. Every job I've ever had since I was 14 was web/software related and I am nearly 39. I feel like I have no practical skills outside of computers and the idea of building things with my hands or using power tools just fills me with anxiety. I wish I knew how to break out of the mindset.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#248

Post by mym1990 » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #123

I recommend gardening. It's really satisfying to see stuff grow, to learn how to tend to plants, how they compete and cooperate. It helps me to preserve some sanity.

I tried out hydroponics over the pandemic and it was fantastic! I stuck a pepper plant into a cup of water, made sure the nutrients were right, and watched that thing go off, I was an extremely proud plant dad.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#249

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:03 PM UTC

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…

> 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

Guilty (although retired now). When I could apply creativity to my job, I did so, but I think I prefer to have had the outside-work activities to have been my creative outlets.

The application to express creativity in software is fairly narrow in comparison to other activities and, as was pointed out in this thread, physically creating with your hands (rather than virtual creating with your keyboard) is ... real.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#250

Post by nkozyra » Fri, May 03, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

9dev wrote: post #235

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 think you’re romanticising woodworking a bit here. A large saw is specifically built to allow doing a single, precise cut, in exactly the same way, over and over again. The tools are absolutely made to prevent you from messing up the various ways, it’s just that you don’t use the professionals tools at home. And indeed that’s something I’d apply to software: both hobbyists and small companies are tempted to use pro…

> A large saw is specifically built to allow doing a single, precise cut, in exactly the same way, over and over again.

Ignoring hand tools, which give you precise, tactile control ... I'd still argue with this.

There are tools for specific things and they're meant to reduce error. But a router (woodworking) can be used to do half the stuff you want/need to do. A table saw can make straight cuts, rabbets, joinery.

The tools themselves (outside of specialty ones) are generally multi-purpose and allow for experimentation and creativity.