The cloudy layers of modern-day programming • Hacker News Board

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#31

Post by mattgreenrocks » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

One thing I had to learn to value my sanity here was to simply not argue about certain topics, such as software architecture. It was like there was this wall of people who emerge from the shadows anytime I argue for better architecture, because it wasn’t directly responsible for Important Enterprise Business Features.

Now I realize there’s probably more than one flavor of engineer:

1. software eng: ships features, prefers to use ready-made abstractions

2. infrastructure-ish eng: ships things that enable shipping of features, prefers to invent abstractions

The things they value are very different! I suspect HN tends more toward SW engineers (because statistics) with some stuff for infrastructure engineers.

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#32

Post by lordgrenville » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

As some other commenters have said, this is really a self-inflicted problem. The author has chosen to do an EDA task which is very manageable on a laptop via a convoluted stack of cloud services - possibly just to illustrate a point. But even if this all worked smoothly, the fact that it is far removed from "software engineering" has more to do with the fact that it's a data analysis project. If it were about about writing firmware for audio hardware it would look very different.

Nitpick: ! for shell commands is an IPython feature, not Jupyter. It doesn't work with other kernels.

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#33

Post by thr0wawayf00 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #28

Good article, great points. The Knuth quote on lack of creativity is right on the money. It's why I've been drifting away from hands-on programming even though I'd rather not. I still love programming as much as I ever did as a teenager. Late at night when everyone is asleep and I can work on my own code, it's as much joy as it ever was. What's different is that at $DAYJOB back in the 90s and 00s it used to be just a…

> Nowadays when it's just gluing frameworks together and configuring AWS services... it doesn't really feel any different intellectually than cleaning toilets.

Comparing your six figure white collar job to basic janitorial work is pretty damn cringe and pretty objectively untrue.

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#34

Post by therealdrag0 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

rr888 wrote: post #22

jakeinspace wrote: post #7

What scares me about ChatGPT is less so that I’ll lose my job (though it’s possible), but more so that I’ll be using language models to work at higher and higher levels of abstraction doing mainly configuration tweaking. Some of the particular pain points expressed in the article should be removed with AI in the loop development, but it’s another step away from “real programming”, which is what attracted most of us t…

Its already like this. My first job in the 90s I wrote our own linked list classes, a logging framework and a persistence layer. Now it feels like I write css and yaml all day.

You could switch to a job where you’re not writing css and yaml?

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#35

Post by plugin-baby » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

gilbetron wrote: post #12

I've been comparing much of modern-day programming to assembling a kit from a knockoff Lego brand. It seems like it's easy, but then there's a lot of cursing and annoyances as the pieces don't quite fit together.

Knockoff Lego quality is getting very very good these days.

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#36

Post by CyberDildonics » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

tester756 wrote: post #18

If you feel like "modern programming is boring configuration mess" then ask yourself - what have you done in order to have interesting job, projects, challenges, etc? I mean, if you decided at some point that $big_salary for throwing JSONs via REST from CRUD app is what you want to do until you pay your loans (e.g decade), then it's fine, but don't be shocked that you aren't doing bleeding edge R&D at some fancy plac…

If you feel like "modern programming is boring configuration mess"

then ask yourself - what have you done in order to have interesting job, projects, challenges, etc?

These two things don't connect to each other at all

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#37

Post by pcthrowaway » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #33

jjav wrote: post #28

Good article, great points. The Knuth quote on lack of creativity is right on the money. It's why I've been drifting away from hands-on programming even though I'd rather not. I still love programming as much as I ever did as a teenager. Late at night when everyone is asleep and I can work on my own code, it's as much joy as it ever was. What's different is that at $DAYJOB back in the 90s and 00s it used to be just a…

> Nowadays when it's just gluing frameworks together and configuring AWS services... it doesn't really feel any different intellectually than cleaning toilets. Comparing your six figure white collar job to basic janitorial work is pretty damn cringe and pretty objectively untrue.

OK, what if we say plumbing then? Same idea, and the pay is within an order of magnitude at the median.

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#38

Post by slim » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

somrand0 wrote: post #4

oh yea. using a software framework like django for "rapid application development" gives me a feeling closer to writing configuration files rather than actually "programming" (where "programming" is writing hardcore algorithms). but don't get me wrong, I liked doing that, I got paid to do it. But let's call it for what it is: that python code (django app) was really django framework config. this is a simlar phenomeno…

I think you nailed it with configuration vs programming. modern software development is configuration. notice that "development" is not programming either. so this trend has been going for long time

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#39

Post by CyberDildonics » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #17

Do architects reinvent the I-beam every time they design a new building? No, of course not. The reason society works is because you can reuse abstractions that other people have already invented . It allows you to scale. Without economies of scale, you end up with Baumol's cost disease, which is extremely obvious in the US in industries like child and elderly care. We don't want most software devs to be doing anythin…

I beams aren't abstractions, they are a well designed standard that can consistently meet certain expectations.

Re: The cloudy layers of modern-day programming

#40

Post by nijave » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #31

One thing I had to learn to value my sanity here was to simply not argue about certain topics, such as software architecture. It was like there was this wall of people who emerge from the shadows anytime I argue for better architecture, because it wasn’t directly responsible for Important Enterprise Business Features. Now I realize there’s probably more than one flavor of engineer: 1. software eng: ships features, pr…

I think in any moderately large business you'll have both.

1. Is usually implementing business logic for the product 2. Is generally working on things #1 uses to work productively

I'm not sure about the composition on HN, but I see a lot of #2 in "DevOps"/SRE roles. Usually these roles are skipped for small startups but at some point they get big enough they need dedicated people to take them on