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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

#31

Post by smartstakestime »

world32 wrote: post #29
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.

browsers + javascript + css (frontend opensource) ... to backend , many frameworks for each langauge, many languages all documented ... to persistence layer (mysql , postgres, mssql), and finally server but as OP said thats on amazon, Azure, Dreamhost ... etc

OP is discussing more so the practice of professional dev for 70 - 90% of the devs. Business guys want results , they dont care about scaling and so its about getting it out ASAP. Theres alot of politics, I was taken aback at first, with the idea of CS/software being very technical but it seems that this creates more of a differentiator for political manipulation, cause everyone is already skilled in analytics.

I could go into more detail but basically its all there and a search away (google). In fact there is a term in the industry called "google-fu" (like kung-fu) which means the number of searchers you need to perform to get an answer.

Its a double edge sword. All devs are on their own for learning, but all the info is out there, you just need to be willing to search and learn.

Sadly many people are not like that, and that seperates the good dev from the bad dev (besides the politics).

I assume its the same for being a surgeon, that all you have to do is study and learn the info and you can do it. But having a steady hand is very important. And sadly , if everyone had a steady hand , you'd still have the same amount of surgeons. Those who can do. You want to be a dev, open up the next tab and type into your tool bar "how to learn javascript". Realize that devs created this tool for you, and if you are not a dev its because you dont want to be. Its all there, the web is your oyster.

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

#32

Post by world32 »

smartstakestime wrote: post #31
world32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

browsers + javascript + css (frontend opensource) ... to backend , many frameworks for each langauge, many languages all documented ... to persistence layer (mysql , postgres, mssql), and finally server but as OP said thats on amazon, Azure, Dreamhost ... etc OP is discussing more so the practice of professional dev for 70 - 90% of the devs. Business guys want results , they dont care about scaling and so its about g…

> browsers + javascript + css (frontend opensource) ... to backend , many frameworks for each langauge, many languages all documented ... to persistence layer (mysql , postgres, mssql), and finally server but as OP said thats on amazon, Azure, Dreamhost ... etc

All of that requires a significant amount of engineering and coding to get working. Just using a frontend framework does not give you a working application, you still have to code that application.

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

#33

Post by interfixus »

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.

As perceived by the general public, there is a huge difference: Most people have some idea, however vague, what a doctor or a lawyer actually does, while 'programming a computer' is utterly obscure and opaque to a lot of those same people.

This keeps surprising me again and again, but apparently any kind of computing device is a black box built on magic, probably to the vast majority out there.

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

#34

Post by Nursie »

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…

> Nothing special, anyone can do it.

They really can't. What you describe is beyond the vast majority of people. Not the vast majority of well educated people, perhaps, not the vast majority of STEM people, sure. But most folks? They'd take one look and run away from the insanely complex wizardry you seem to be practicing.

Also, as other posters have said - that's your experience, not everyone's. Someone has to write the automation tools. Someone has to write the libraries. Someone has to know how to write a compiler, to write crypto routines. Someone has to create AWS.

There are a lot of paint-by-numbers coding roles out there, sure, but it's far from the whole industry.

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

#35

Post by AltmousGadfly »

The building where I work has a rather large cubicle farm full of software engineers. Most of them are perfectly normal people. Men, women, black, white, Asian. We got all kinds. But there are a couple who are different.

- One guy I call "hoodie guy" wears a hoodie all the time. I live in Central GA where its 90-plus degrees and 90-plus humidity in the summer time. Hoodie Guy is still wearing the hoodie zipped up and hood up. Hoodie Guy doesn't talk to people.

- Got another guy who wears the same clothes all week. Asked him about it once; he said he bought 5 sets of the same clothes so he wouldn't have to choose in the morning. Like a uniform I guess.

- Got another guy who has a duplicate of the computer they work on at his house; this is not a PC. Its a purpose-built piece of mil-spec hardware that we put on airplanes to process data. We didn't give him one so he could code at home. He built it from doodads he picked up at surplus sales and trash heaps. Dude is hella smart.

But most of the people in cubicle hell are pretty normal.

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

#36

Post by C1sc0cat »

smartstakestime wrote: post #31
world32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

browsers + javascript + css (frontend opensource) ... to backend , many frameworks for each langauge, many languages all documented ... to persistence layer (mysql , postgres, mssql), and finally server but as OP said thats on amazon, Azure, Dreamhost ... etc OP is discussing more so the practice of professional dev for 70 - 90% of the devs. Business guys want results , they dont care about scaling and so its about g…

"all documented" ROTFL what world do you live-in

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

#37

Post by Cthulhu_ »

world32 wrote: post #29
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.

I strongly had that feeling when I was still doing Java + Spring; there's a huge ecosystem of well designed (or, at the time anyway) frameworks and libraries, which can all be easily hooked into each other via the Spring framework. The job of a developer was more data wrangling, designing models and relations, and defining the outward REST API. Things like creating database tables, converting to JSON, input validation etc are all handled by libraries, as a developer you mostly have to configure what models should be mapped to the database side, what to the front-end side, write some glue code to convert the one to the other, and write a bunch of documentation for the public API.

Not to disparage this work (my own work) too much, mind you; it's quite challenging to create a proper API, consistent, well-documented, etc.

I really appreciate e.g. a proper OpenAPI spec, because that means I can hit a button and have a front-end consumer library generated in Typescript, which in turn helps me more easily map a user's input (forms) with the expected input.

But yeah, it can get quite tedious / boring / unchallenging if you're not into data wrangling like that.

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

#38

Post by Cthulhu_ »

JamesBarney wrote: post #11
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…

In real life there are still projects that are failing, that are going over time and budget. There are smart guys on those projects with masters in c.s. who are making completely boneheaded calls that will mean they aren't adding any value. We can talk about how easy software is and it's just glueing a bunch of components together. But whole we do there are millions of devs that are flailing and failing to do that.

One issue I have seen is that when systems should be easy to make - you know, database, data wrangling, rest API - people tend to make it more challenging for themselves.

Case in point: exactly an application like what I just described, but because that was boring and basically the same application as already existed in terms of architecture, they made it a microservices application that was only supposed to communicate via events published on a central event bus. Which can be a good design pattern I guess, but they lacked an architect, formal specifications of said event bus events, and a too quick conclusion of "this needs to be in its own microservice". Tl;dr, after a year and a half they still had nothing to show for but a well put together powerpoint slide deck, and a lot of half-finished components that should in theory sorta work together.

That is, unchecked developers have a tendency to overcomplicate things for their own enjoyment / challenge. I don't know how to fix that, besides having a strong tech lead who is able to rein people in and ground them.

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

#39

Post by C1sc0cat »

scrollaway wrote: post #28
rxhernandez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (…

Its not the same as working at the real bleading edge though which is what the previous couple of posters meant.

I miss working on campus at CIT (Cranfield Uni) unfortunately the pay was abysmal - some realy cool work tough.

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