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Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

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Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#281

Post by jimbokun »

jwr wrote: post #146
usrnm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with doing a boring job for a lot of money and then getting all the fun elsewhere? This actually seems to be the best way to do it to me

It sounds like modern day slavery, or perhaps more precisely "corvee" labor. You have to toil away on your master's land before doing your own thing. I find it unbearable, but sadly much of the world has to deal with it.

You are mocking the suffering of actual slaves by comparing a modern highly compensated office job to slavery.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#282

Post by beryilma »

ryandrake wrote: post #228
thunky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My objection is to the idea that it's always a good thing If everyone doesn't follow the standards all the time then there are no standards. Code is not art, it's instructions. If you can't write instructions without adding your own avant garde whitespace brush strokes to it then yes coding for a professional company may not be your jam.

> Code is not art, it's instructions. This is one of the major differences between hobby programming and work programming. When you're writing code as a hobby, it can be anything you want: code can be art, instructions, math, beauty, a means to an end, an experiment... At work, code must ultimately be a tool that creates profit. It has to be manageable, consistent, and boring.

It is a mistaken idea that work programming is or must be boring. I think you might mean "boring" as opposed to unnecessarily "creative" or complicated. But not all work code is boring, boiler-plate code.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#283

Post by vbezhenar »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #255
_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…

What time is left after work, kids, sleep, and personal obligations for the median adult? Awesome hobbies are awesome! But they require time, and in some cases, financial resources.

And many hobbies require space. I'd love to do some woodworking but I don't have any space for that. I live in small flat. Of course nothing money couldn't solve, but buying huge house with workshop is another level of expenses and requires lifestyle changes as well.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#284

Post by jimbokun »

WillAdams wrote: post #138

Interestingly, Glenn Reid also escaped from making software (Touchtype.app, PasteUp.app, wrote "The Green Book", _PostScript Language Program Design_) to making dovetail joined furniture by hand. That said, I've always described the "Maker" movement as "Geeks who missed shop class", and have argued that the world would be a better place if the Sloyd system of woodworking as a basic constituent of education was preval…

Isn't it more Geeks who enjoyed shop class, but went into software because it paid more?

(I'm the Geek who hated shop class, and thank my locking stars I can make a living writing software, decades later.)

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#285

Post by _huayra_ »

colecut wrote: post #247
_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…

I've always recommended hobbies that meet the following criteria

1. Don't require you to interact with screens 2. Require your full attention (e.g. if you were listening to a podcast while doing it, you wouldn't remember a single thing they were talking about) 3. Has a social aspect, but is also possible to do on your own 4. Preferably physical 5. Preferably has some level of "controllable danger/risk", e.g. mountain biking is good because you can walk down hard stuff or stay on easy trails, vs. road biking you don't control the risk of getting injured / killed by a driver.

Some that fall into this category are climbing, skiing, mountain biking, surfing, windsurfing.

There's the other category that this post about woodworking scratches: building things and developing new skills and mastery doing so. However, these don't often come with an easily-accessible, accepting community; it's usually just you alone in a garage. Given how important social connection is, and how isolating a lot of tech jobs can be, this is a void that a lot of us on this orange website need to actively pursue.

If you're in any "tech city", there's definitely a climbing gym nearby. Climbers are almost always amicable, and for the socially anxious, it's a great pretense to interact with someone (because they have to be on the other end of the rope anyway). The amount of capital outlay to get started is low (e.g. shoes, belay device, and a harness will cost <$300 total if you get nice stuff, albeit sticking with the non-expert shoes!), and you can pretty much start having fun right away (vs skiing takes at least a season to get confident enough to truly start having fun and not "surviving").

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#286

Post by eddd-ddde »

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…

> the tyranny of linters

This is a take I don't think I've seen before. Is someone actually mad prettier is changing their single quotes to double quotes? Are they mad some line is breaking at some word?

Certainly I've never been. I use linters / formatters even when I'm working solo because the mere concept of having to think where to break lines is meaningless disruption from the actual goals I have.

If you _really_ want to break a line somewhere, just add a comment in between and your linter will comply.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#287

Post by hinkley »

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 small companies, across a long career, I’ve solved the same problems many times. But that’s not the part that stings the most.

What grinds my gears is failing to solve problems I’ve already solved. At some point you have to convince others that a plan is good. Your arguments might not work on a new team. You might not know what the secret sauce was that got you consensus last time. Or after years of getting your way you may forget some of the arguments for an idea.

Because mastery is, at the end of the day, converting an intellectual process into intuition, so you can go faster. Once a decision process is successfully ingrained, the intellectualized path is dead weight.

There’s a lot of vaguely intellectually lazy, cheap instead of frugal thinking, and ethically challenged people in or around our industry, and the collective weight of it causes pushback on progress.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#288

Post by JKCalhoun »

InitialLastName wrote: post #276
JKCalhoun wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much better to leave a comment saying "there's a subtle but important thing going on here". Sure, but don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Well-meaning engineers frequently don't document their code at all. It's why I advocate programmers at least use descriptive variable names and function names; what I call "self-documenting code". It still falls short of well-documented code but, as I say, gets you "good"…

For sure, well-written code often doesn't need comments to explain itself; my point was that "there's an extra space here so you know this bit is important" is pretty much the opposite of that.

I do use whitespace (empty lines) to "group" parts of a function the way paragraphs group thoughts in prose. For a function it might be as simple as param-check, setup, loop, tear-down. But it makes it a little clearer that some lines of tightly-grouped code represent an "activity" (sub-activity?).

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#289

Post by ajmurmann »

colecut wrote: post #247
_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…

I started out with no physical skills and only ever have worked in software. However, I took a pottery class and loved it. Classes also start you out on a schedule which is a great way to make sure you actually invest in your new hobby. Similarly you can take classes in most tech shops as well.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#290

Post by skeeter2020 »

Nothing destroys your love of a hobby, even one that you are passionately (or even obsessively) dedicated to, like making it your job. I LOVE riding bikes but all the BS of working in software is preferable to trying to support my love of bikes within the broader industry of bikes.

The word "amateur" has negative connotations, but should really be interpreted as "not your primary pay cheque", not that you suck.

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