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Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#31

Post by helpfulContrib »

I've recently started gardening as an alternative to the near-daily exhaustion I feel as a result of hacking just too hard on things.

Let me tell you, there is nothing more joyous than going outside 3 days after planting new seed varieties in a recovered-soil hügel-bed, and seeing brand new leafy life reaching for the stars. I get the same sort of buzz out of watching seedlings push dirt out of the way, as I used to get from checking for PR's on some of my repo's, lol ..

Its at the point now where I have to have a desktop garden, or else I just don't feel complete as a human being. Lucky, there are tons of things I can take from my new hügel-bed's to plant on the desk, herbs, spices, salads and things .. its just so rewarding.

So yeah, garden, programmers. Garden. Its so good for you. And you can get a buzz from the methods, just like you do with code, too ...

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#33

Post by huppeldepup »

anonzzzies wrote: post #10

I am working on coding stuff I like as escape for the absurdity of modern software. I make little games, stuff for 8 bit systems etc. Stuff that is as far away from anything modern , especially the hell of node, next, devops and ‘web frameworks’ as I possibly can. It works. It’s very relaxing, like a bonsai tree.

I wonder whether we’ll see the same parallel as with cars: those with tech and those without - old-timers.

I only code as a hobby anymore. Burnout destroyed my career and now I design PCBs and write embedded software without LLMs.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#34

Post by sanitycheck »

withinboredom wrote: post #25
cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but this isn’t my first rodeo. In the future, please more carefully exercise more discretion when whipping out the snark. > software engineers can't estimate how long something will take with any kind of accuracy. This is both irrelevant and wrong. It’s irrelevant because t-shirt sizes, story points, and other abstract measures, are - intentionally - not measures of time. It’s a measure of effort, benchmarked…

I'm not sure you're agreeing with me and using disagreeing words, or you didn't read what I wrote... Software engineers can't estimate how long things will take: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02637... They're wrong, 60% of the time by overestimation and when underestimated, so vastly wrong it's terrifying. I remember this one time I merely had to update a component in prod. Everything went fi…

I think you've linked to a study of "expert project managers", and we might see similar results in a study of whether "expert project managers" can succeed in tying their own shoelaces.

If you're working with a system where your staging environment is not sufficiently close to your prod environment to be entirely predictive of behaviour, that's a "known unknown" and should be in the estimate.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#35

Post by sukruh »

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 eats a creative person's soul.

I want the clarity of being able to talk to "the boss/the customer" and solve their problems and get paid the market rate for my skills. Not prepare endless PowerPoints for my skip-level, who has no ownership but has to act in their own best interests in a swamp of principal-agent problems.

This is why I am very happy at a fast-growing small tech company where one can have honest conversations about the customer and the product. How do other people deal with this?

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#36

Post by fredley »

anonzzzies wrote: post #10

I am working on coding stuff I like as escape for the absurdity of modern software. I make little games, stuff for 8 bit systems etc. Stuff that is as far away from anything modern , especially the hell of node, next, devops and ‘web frameworks’ as I possibly can. It works. It’s very relaxing, like a bonsai tree.

I do this too. Making games for the Playdate has been the most enjoyable programming I've done in years.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#37

Post by UK-AL »

Scarblac wrote: post #24
vedranm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read Steve McConnell's Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art and I can recommend it without hesitation. It is quite old by now so there might be something newer and better out there as well.

That book says the opposite though, we can definitely make good estimates. It's just that estimating well needs people with training on how to do that, and then it takes substantial time to make good estimates. And there will still be significant error bars (if the estimate isn't a range , it doesn't count as an estimate). But it's certainly doable.

People who ask for estimates, don't consider estimates with huge error bars good. Literally anyone can make estimate with a decent amount of error.

To narrow down the estimate to what they want would take just as long as just doing the work.

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#38

Post by maptime »

I made my son a floor bed, it's really true that when you work with code all day having something tangible that you can touch helps.

It took twice as long as I thought. It cost double what it would have cost to buy one of Etsy but it's still one of my favourite things I've done in ages. My son still gets excited when he see's it sometimes

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#39

Post by lucianbr »

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…

Aren't you afraid that the "fast-growing" small company will soon become a large company, with all the problems you mentioned you want to avoid?

Re: Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software

#40

Post by kristiandupont »

withinboredom wrote: post #4
cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #2

> when the Agile meetings at my last job got so absurd that we were being asked to estimate JIRA task time in T-shirt sizes Feels like a very outsized reaction to have to something well-intentioned, useful, and not-ridiculous.

It's quite ridiculous for a number of reasons, well documented by research and experience: software engineers can't estimate how long something will take with any kind of accuracy.

HN loves to make this claim but it just doesn't match my experience, from several teams. Estimates are not precise, obviously, but that doesn't mean that they are impossible to make or that they add no value.
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